


Iridescent

by orphan_account



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-04
Updated: 2011-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-26 21:44:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 38,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/288234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Charles is the mutant terrorist and Erik is the professor, and nothing is the same but everything is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. headlines

**Author's Note:**

> Fic masterpost, notes, and thank yous [here](http://zihna.livejournal.com/3334.html).
> 
> Art (amazing vid and fanmix) [here](http://livelikejack.livejournal.com/52027.html).

prologue: headlines

  
October 1962  
 **CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS AVERTED! AMERICA AND USSR CALL A TRUCE!**

  
 **REPORTS FROM CUBA—SUBMARINE LIFTED TWO HUNDRED FEET INTO THE AIR! MISSILES TURNED BACK ON THE FLEETS! NEW COMMUNIST TECHNOLOGY?**

  
 **EXTRA! EXTRA! CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS SECRET REVEALED—SUPERPOWERED “MUTANTS” LIVING AMONG US!**

  
November 1962  
 **MUTANTS ARE EVERYWHERE, ACCORDING TO GOV’T. THE PUBLIC IS NERVOUS. JUST WHAT CAN THESE MUTANTS DO?**

  
December 1962  
 **MUTANT ATTACK! POLICE WENT TO QUESTION ALLEGED MUTANT AND WERE NEARLY KILLED BY MAN WHO CANNOT BE STOPPED!**

  
 **MUTANT CONVICTED IN THE KILLINGS OF THREE CIVILIANS, ATTEMPTS TO ESCAPE AND IS SHOT IN THE PROCESS!**

  
 **MUTANT KILLS ONE, INJURES FOUR MORE COWORKERS!**

  
January 1963  
 **DEATH TOLL MOUNTS! MUTANTS ARE DANGEROUS!**

  
 **FRIENDS OF HUMANITY” TAKING AGGRESSIVE ANTI-MUTANT STANCE!**

  
 **WORLD LOOKS TO AMERICA TO DEAL WITH GROWING “MUTANT PROBLEM.” NEXT MOVE?**

February 1963  
 **FRIENDS OF HUMANITY SAVAGELY BEAT THREE MUTANTS! DRIVE SEVEN OTHERS OUT OF TOPEKA BAR!**

  
 **MUTANT RETALIATION! THREE F.O.H MEMBERS FOUND BEATEN AND AMNESIAC OUTSIDE TOPEKA BAR! NO RECOLLECTION OF THEIR ATTACKERS!**

  
March 1963  
 **VIOLENCE IN THE STREETS OF CHICAGO! F.O.H ATTACK GROUP OF MUTANTS, BEAT SEVEN, CRITICALLY WOUND THREE! MUTIES DENIED PROTECTIVE CUSTODY IN HOSPITAL!**

  
 **ANOTHER RETALIATION! THREE F.O.H MEMBERS SENT TO THE HOSPITAL, NEARLY COMATOSE; NO MEMORIES OF ATTACKERS!**

  
 **VIOLENCE SPREADS THROGH ILLONOIS! CASUALTIES RISING DAILY! MUTIES AND HUMANS READY TO DRAW BLOOD!**

  
April 1963  
 **MUTANT FATHER BLOWS HIMSELF UP, KILLING WIFE AND THREE CHILDREN!**

  
 **MUTIES OUTED DAILY, DENIED WORK! F.O.H. DEMANDING LEGISLATURE TO “PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF NORMAL, HUMAN CITIZENS!”**

  
 **CONGRESS TO MEET AT BEGINNING OF AUGUST TO DISCUSS ANTI-MUTANT LAWS! CITIES REJOICE, EXPECTING AN END TO THE VIOLENCE!**

  
May 1963  
 **EXTRA! MUTANT THREAT TO CONGRESS! GROUP CALLING ITSELF “THE BROTHERHOOD OF MUTANTS” DECLARES THEY WILL NOT STAND FOR ANTI-MUTANT LAWS.**

  
 **“BROTHERHOOD OF MUTANTS” CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY FOR RETALIATORY ATTACKS ON F.O.H. MEMBERS—PROMISES MORE IF VIOLENCE AGAINST MUTANTS CONTINUES!**

  
 **F.O.H. TAKES STANCE AGAINST BROTHERHOOD! SPECIAL ISSUE FROM LEADER OF F.O.H., ADRESSED TO THE LEADER OF THE BROTHERHOOD!**

  
 **“WE WILL NOT BACK DOWN UNTIL HUMANS ARE SAFE FROM YOU FREAKS,” DECLARES F.O.H. “YOU ARE A MENACE TO GOOD, NORMAL PEOPLE. COLLAR YOURSELVES AND WE WON’T BE FORCED TO FIGHT YOU.”**

  
June 1963  
 **GRAFITTI ON CAPITOL HILL! SECURITY KNOCKED UNCONCIOUS, LARGE WORDS “WE WILL BE FREE” PAINTED ONTO THE STAIRS OF THE CAPITOL BUILDING!**

  
 **F.O.H. CHAPTER IN CHICAGO, ILLINOIS HOSPITALIZED! MEN TERRIFIED, CONVINCED THEY WERE ASSAULTED BY A DEMON AND A MAN WHO SUMMONED TORNADOES FROM HIS HANDS! MEMBERS OF THE BROTHERHOOD?**

 **GROUP OF MUTIES NEARLY KILLED! UNCONCIOUS IN HOSPITAL! THE VIOLENCE CONTINUES TO ESCALATE!**

  
July 1963  
 **BROTHERHOOD LEADER REVEALED! HE IS CALLED “X”! GOVERNMENT AGENCIES SCRAMBLING TO FIND REAL IDENTITY!**

  
 **“AZAZEL,” “RIPTIDE,” “ANGEL.” THE CODENAMES OF THE BROTHERHOOD’S TOP MEMBERS!**

  
 **MORE ATTACKS, THIS TIME FATAL! THREE HUMANS KILLED IN CHICAGO! TWO IN NEW YORK! SEVEN IN LOS ANGELES!**

  
 **MUTANT BROTHERHOOD OFFICIALLY LABELED “TERRORIST GROUP!” FBI ISSUES WARRANTS FOR THE ARRESTS OF X AND HIS FOLLOWERS! ANY INFORMATION LEADING TO THE CAPTURE OF ANY BROTHERHOOD MEMBER REWARDED!**

  
 **CONGRESS TO MEET NEXT MONTH! F.O.H. AND BROTHERHOOD ATTACKS INCREASING! DEATH TOLL MOUNTING ON BOTH SIDES!**

  
 **THIS IS WAR! CRY THE PEOPLE! WHAT WILL CONGRESS DO?! ANTI-MUTANT LAWS ARE EXPECTED TO PASS—RETALATION FROM BROTHERHOOD ALSO EXPECTED.**

  
August 1963  
 **ALL-OUT WAR ON BROTHERHOOD AND MUTANTS EXPECTED TO BE ANNOUNCED! CONGRESS MEETS IN TWO WEEKS!!**

  
 **EXTRA! EXTRA! CIA “MUTANT-RELATIONS” OFFICIALS TO MEET WITH A MUTANT! IS IT X? A RUSE? OR IS THERE PEACE ON THE HORIZON?**

  
 **“WE WILL NOT ATTACK ANYONE ON AUGUST 12, 1964,” DECLARES BROTHERHOOD. “CONSIDER IT A SHOW OF GOOD FAITH SO THE MUTANT AMBASSADOR TO THE CIA WILL NOT BE HARMED.”**

 **"CIA AGREES: MUTANT AMBASSADOR WILL NOT BE HARMED. AN UNEASY TRUCE OCCURS! HOW LONG CAN IT LAST?"**   
  



	2. widsom (x)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They are on the eve of war.

part one: wisdom (x)

  
 _august 1963_

 **0.**

“No.”

“ _No?_ ”

“No,” he repeated, and leaned back in the chair.

A frustrated hiss rippled down the lines of black-suited men and they glared, pulling themselves taller like they could intimidate him into agreeing.

He bit down on a smirk. As if they could intimidate _him._

“Mr. Lehnsherr,” the man at the head of the table said slowly, like he was talking to a child or a dog.

 _Or a mutant,_ Erik thought, and stifled it ruthlessly.

“Mr. Stryker,” he said instead, in the exact same tone.

Stryker frowned.

“Mr. Lehnsherr,” he continued, acting like there hadn’t been an interruption at all. “You have to understand that this is a matter of _national security._ You’ve been watching the news and reading the papers. You know how close we are to an all-out war. The people are calling for blood, for laws that will reduce your kind to nothing.”

Erik studied Stryker, taking in his pressed suit, his hard expression. This was the man in charge of the CIA’s Mutant-Relations Division and Congress’s favorite consultant on the Anti-Mutant Bill, and that made him the single largest threat to Erik’s newborn people.

It made Stryker an enemy.

What came next was a force of habit.

 _Weak knees,_ Erik thought. _Badly out of shape. Soft hands. Moves too slow._

He mentally noted Stryker’s weaknesses and flattened his hands on the table. The wood was smooth and cold.

Between Erik and Stryker, eight men sat on each side of the long table; members of the Mutant-Relations Division, Congressmen, FBI agents. They were the ones leading the charge against _his_ people, and after sitting in a room with them for ten minutes, he knew their weaknesses well enough to kill them all with pens, if he wanted to.

He didn’t, though. He could’ve, easily, but he didn’t, and probably never would.

Erik wasn’t going to be the one who started the war, not this time.

“Do you understand, Mr. Lehnsherr?” Stryker repeated, in the same slow, patronizing tone. Erik twitched and tried not to imagine gutting him with a paperclip.

“Yes,” he said evenly, and he was proud of the way nothing shook.  
“Then you have to see—”

“I fail to see what rebuilding Cerebro will do for mutant-human relations,” Erik cut in sharply.  
“Cerebro is a device of immense power,” Stryker rumbled. “According to the data recovered from the Mutant Division facility, Cerebro could locate any mutant in the world.”

“With a trained telepath using it.”

“We have a telepath.”

“Frost?” _You’re idiots,_ Erik almost said. _All of you. It’s amazing he hasn’t destroyed you all yet._ “The telepath must be _willing_ to use Cerebro—it is not a device you can control. The telepath controls it, and if Emma Frost is in control, there is very little that can stop her from killing you.”

An uneasy whisper rippled through the room.

“Dangerous,” Erik heard.

“Too dangerous.”

Stryker frowned again.

“If Cerebro fell into the wrong hands,” Erik pointed out quietly, hating to do this, to make _him_ more the enemy.

More murmurs, this time of agreement, shot through the room. X was a telepath and this committee knew it. They were still unsure exactly what made a telepath (or any of the mutants, really, aside from the obvious ones) dangerous, but they were learning.

Erik wasn’t sure if this was good or bad.

“Cerebro would soothe the public’s fears,” a Senator said. “If we told the press we had a device that could locate X and his followers—”

“That would be lying,” another Senator, Edward Kennedy, argued. “It’s like Mr. Lehnsherr—” he nodded to Erik, the first sign of politeness the mutant had seen all day— “said. If we didn’t deliver X on a platter within a few days, they’d be furious.”

Stryker’s face was sour. “Fine,” he said, through gritted teeth. “Next item on the agenda, then.”  
Erik met his eyes across the table, and they were cold and ruthless. The message in them was clear: _I’ll let it go for now, but I will not forget._

 _This one,_ Erik thought, _will be a problem._

“The mutant terrorist called X must be captured,” Stryker said.

Erik’s heart sank.

“If we capture him, we can stop this war before it starts,” Kennedy agreed. “Cut off the head, as it were.”

The rest of the room seemed to agree, and Stryker’s eyes flashed triumphantly.

“So, Mr. Lehnsherr,” he said. “You came to us saying you wished to stop the war.”

“Yes,” Erik murmured, and tried to keep the metal fixtures from rattling.

“Who is X?”

Erik stared at him, long and hard. “First, give me your word that if you imprison X, you will also imprison the leaders of the Friends of Humanity. It’s not just the mutants’ fault. Humans are starting this war too.”

An uneasy ripple—the committee didn’t like that idea.

Steel straightened Erik’s spine.

“Humans started this conflict,” he said lowly. “Mutants _saved_ you at Cuba, and when we were revealed we did not attack humans, humans attacked _us._ ”

“Mutants are dangerous,” another man protested. “The powers they have are a threat to the public. You’ve read the news. They can blow themselves up, spit acid, throw cars. They need to be _controlled,_ much more than Friends of Humanity does.”

“Humans can shoot,” Erik shot back, and anger rose violent and bitter in his throat. The numbers etched into his skin burned. “Humans can stab. Humans can maim and kill and create death camps. You’ve read the news. Two human parents drowned their eight-year-old daughter a week ago because her power manifested. They drowned their own _child._ ”

Several of the suited men shifted, uncomfortable, and Erik smiled sharp and hard. “Humans are just as dangerous as mutants are,” he said. “You don’t see us calling for you to be branded, locked up, and exterminated.”

“We have more self-control,” the man—an FBI agent, Erik thought—argued. “Mutants can’t control themselves.”

“Really?” Anger, old and familiar, hardened in Erik’s gut. Men like this were the reason his people, young and afraid and confused, were forced to hide. Men like this were destroying them, driving them out of their homes. His power surged and the metal in the room sang; without stopping to think he reached out to the man’s buttons, cufflinks, and belt buckle and _tugged—_

The man yelped and flailed wildly as he was lifted out of his chair and Erik narrowed his eyes, keeping his hands flat on the table.

“My God!” Stryker yelled, and most of the room seemed to feel the same way.

Edward Kennedy, however, watched his colleague float (not even that fast, really, the man was overreacting) to the ceiling with interested eyes and a tiny smile on his face.

“What are you doing?” Stryker turned to Erik, his face purple with fury and fear.

“Proving a point.” Erik watched until the man was pressed against the ceiling and held there, his buttons shoved against his skin, sticking him to the stucco like magnets.

“So,” Erik continued quietly, like he hadn’t just pinned a man to the ceiling.

“Put him down,” Stryker snapped. “Now.”

“No.”

“What are you trying to prove?”

“Do I have control over myself, Mr. Stryker? Can I control my ability, or is the unfortunate bigot up there going to drop?”

(“I don’t want to die,” said unfortunate bigot wailed.)

“A fall from that height won’t kill you,” Erik snapped. “Now be quiet.” He refocused on Stryker. “I came here for peace,” he said, “and to stop an unnecessary war. I am not the Brotherhood. I do not hate humans or think that the only way for my people to survive is to crush yours. I would like to think we can resolve this peacefully.”

“Put him down—”

“When I am done. I want you to listen to me very carefully, Mr. Stryker. You are asking me to betray one of my own brothers, to turn him over to you.”

“You—”

“I will do it,” Erik said, and he kept his face very still. “I will tell you what you need to know. But first, in writing, I want your _word,_ Stryker. I want everyone in this room’s word that you will not provoke mutantkind. You will not lock us up in facilities, you will not experiment on us, you will not treat us like animals because we are different than you. You will punish the Friends of Humanity the exact same way you punish the Brotherhood. Do you understand?”

Stryker’s jaw twitched and Erik saw his fists were clenched.

“I do not want to go to war,” he continued, softer this time, gentler. “I’ve had enough war for a lifetime. But you will treat mutants equally, Mr. Stryker, or there will be a war, and I will not let my people be exterminated.”

Something very old and cruel flashed across Stryker’s face. “What can you do?” he said. “So you can lift a man. In a warzone, what can you possibly do to an army?”

Kennedy made a soft, warning sound.

Erik smiled. “Do you really want to see?”

“Enough, Stryker,” Kennedy snapped, standing up. “For God’s sake, man, can’t you see Mr. Lehnsherr only wants his people to be treated fairly? Is that so wrong? We’re not Nazis; mutants deserve the same as humans.”

Stryker finally looked away from Erik, choosing instead to glare at Senator Kennedy. The man pinned to the ceiling whimpered.

Kennedy looked at Erik. “We accept your terms,” he said. “Don’t we?”

Everyone else nodded hastily.

“Write it up,” Erik said. “I can wait.”

Stryker nodded to a young man sitting in the corner with a typewriter in his lap. The boy’s nametag gleamed—KELLY, it read, in big blocked letters—and he typed furiously, trying not to meet Erik’s eyes.  
Stryker glared at the window and Kennedy watched Erik, and Erik watched all of them with wary eyes. He knew this could end badly, but he couldn’t bring himself to care all that much. He would not tolerate a Holocaust on the mutants. He wouldn’t. He’d kill every person in this room if he had to. He didn’t want to, but he would. They needed to know that right now.

“Done,” the young man murmured, tugging the completed document out of the typewriter. He handed it to Stryker, and Erik stuck out his hand. The paper was comfortingly heavy in his hands, like a reassurance, and he read it twice just to make sure.

It was everything he had said.

“Sign it,” he ordered, finally lowering the man (a little rougher than necessary, but still) back to the floor, and the paper went around until Stryker was the only one who hadn’t signed it.  
He stared at the paper, frowning, the pen frozen in his hands.

“Sign it, Stryker.”

“You’ll tell us who X is,” the old man said.

“Yes.”

Stryker’s eyes never left Erik’s as he signed slowly, carefully, and then passed the document back.  
“Who is he, Lehnsherr?”

Erik swallowed pain and closed his eyes briefly, keeping his hands pressed flat into the smooth, cool wood. _I’m sorry._

“His name is Charles Xavier.”

  
 _april, 1964_

 **1.**

He woke suddenly to flickering blue light and the phone screaming in his ear. For a second he flailed, caught in the half-space between awake and dreaming, and he felt Cuban sun on his face and sand in his hair. His mouth tasted like blood and saltwater.

The phone was ringing. He reached for it with his power automatically, and caught sight of the clock as he did—2:48 A.M. His heart sank. The phone hit his outstretched hand with a solid thunk and he lifted it to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Lehnsherr.”

Erik bit down on a curse. He knew that voice.  
“Mr. Stryker,” he said heavily.

“We have him,” Stryker said.

Erik went very still. “Charles,” he murmured.

“We have him,” Stryker repeated, smug. “We expect you in Langley in three days. A car will pick you up outside LaGuardia at ten on Monday.”

He hung up and Erik was left with the dial tone ringing in his ear. He didn’t put the phone down.

“Charles,” he whispered. _They caught him._

His thoughts whirled, screaming at each other. _Where was he? How did they get him? Is he alright? Was it my fault?_

He dropped the phone, staring blankly at the flickering blue television screen in his study. He’d fallen asleep watching the news—another day of tense peace between humans and mutants, remarkable only in the fact that no one died or was beaten or blown up.

Erik scrubbed a hand over his eyes, trying to rub sleep and the feel of sand from them. His chest felt tight.

The CIA had Charles.

 _They better have Frank Collin,_ the functioning part of his mind snarled. _Stryker swore._

The CIA had Charles. Erik wondered, briefly, if they had the rest of the Brotherhood as well, or if Charles was their only catch tonight. Not that it mattered—without its leader the Brotherhood would collapse within months. Hopefully Friends of Humanity would be the same, though Erik doubted that it would be a real solution to the problem.

The Brotherhood might collapse, but another group would take its place.

In the year and a half since Cuba, mutants had been discovered all of the world at an alarming rate—there were _thousands_ of them, everywhere, and Erik knew many felt the same as the Brotherhood.  
 _Hell,_ he thought tiredly. _Sometimes_ I _agree with the Brotherhood._

And that attitude was, of course, the reason why mutants and humans had been hovering on the edge of war since August.

Agreeing with the Brotherhood—accepting their methods and ideals—led to supporting their actions, offering them help, and then finally going out and physically helping them.

And Erik would not do that. He couldn’t—he had children to worry about, an entire _race_ to take care of. He wouldn’t lose them, not again, not another people.

Strangely, this thought did nothing to soothe the tightness in his chest.

“Prof?”

Erik turned so fast he heard the bones in his neck crick, reflexively grabbing hold of all the metal scattered across the room.

“Woah,” Alex said, holding up his hands. His hair stuck up in all directions and sleep bagged under his eyes, but he seemed alert and aware, watching Erik keenly. “It’s just me.”

“Alex,” Erik said tiredly, forcing his shoulders to relax. For the first time since waking, he realized how rough his voice sounded.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine.”

Alex tilted his head, eyes sharp, and Erik was uncomfortably reminded of Charles. He looked away.

“I’m fine, Alex. _Alles ist gut._ ”

“Right,” the younger man said and carefully picked his way through Erik’s wreck of a study, clearing old newspapers off the sagging sofa. He paused to watch the TV for a moment, taking in the blurred screen. “When you’re done watching the news, you can turn it off, you know.”

Erik blinked and the TV shut off—the room was suddenly much darker, and Alex was turned a shadow.

“Prof,” the younger mutant said softly.  
“Don’t call me that.”

Alex fell quiet and Erik felt his eyes on him, and he was glad it was dark.

“Who called?”

Erik didn’t answer, calling a paperclip into his palm instead. It glinted in the faint moonlight and he stretched it, trying not to feel the ache in his chest.

“The CIA,” he said after awhile, when the paperclip was looped and twisted on itself. “Stryker.”

He looked at Alex’s shadow briefly. Alex didn’t move.

“They caught Charles,” Erik continued, steadily, he thought, even though the pens on his desk were rattling slightly. “I’m to go to Langley in three days.”

“Prof,” Alex said. “Man, I’m sorr—”

“Don’t.” If he was a little more awake, a little less jarred, Erik would be snapping, angry with Alex, drawing inside his shell like he always did when something hurt. Shaw had taught him that. Hide yourself always, under as much as you can. Be steel, be iron, impenetrable.

Alex shut up.

“I’m going to tell everyone else in the morning,” Erik said softly. “Don’t tell them now. Let them sleep.”  
“Okay.”

For several minutes they sat in silence, the shadows around them long and deep.

 _The CIA has Charles,_ Erik muttered to himself, stuck on that one thought. It looped in his brain, over and over and over, and the pens rattled and the paperclip twisted. _The CIA has Charles, and I told them his name._

“Erik,” Alex said eventually, and Erik saw the pale flash of his face as he shifted. “It’s not your fault—”

“ _Don’t_!” Erik snapped, and metal groaned threateningly all around them. “Go back to bed, Summers.”

“Prof—”

“ _Bed_ , Alex.”

The young mutant was quiet and still for another heartbeat, and then he stood abruptly and stalked from the room, slamming the door behind him.

“Not a fucking child,” Erik heard him say, but at this point he largely didn’t care. Alex was young. He was stupid. He stuck his nose in business that didn’t concern him.

Erik didn’t need him, especially right now.

He didn’t need Alex telling him it wasn’t his fault, because it _was._

With teeth bared in a snarl Erik flicked the tangled paperclip with all the force he could muster, and it rocketed from his hand and punched through the window, whistling out into the grounds.

It was Erik’s fault.

He’d made the deal with Stryker; he’d told them Charles’s name, revealed him, _betrayed_ him—  
 _Not betrayal,_ said the cold part of his mind. _Retribution. He is not your friend, not anymore._  
Charles had abandoned Erik. He’d left him on that fucking Cuban beach and gone off to wage a war. He had shown, quite clearly, that he didn’t need or want Erik. He’d betrayed them all, left them on the beach with two armies bearing down, and gone off with Shaw’s people.

After Cuba they didn’t hear from Charles for months. And then the Brotherhood fought its way to the surface and Erik _knew_ it was Charles, he _knew_ it. When the leader was revealed as “X,” Erik had leaned back in the chair and held Raven while she quietly cried into his arms.

Charles abandoned them.

It was only fair, only _right_ , that Erik betray him.

Erik smirked bitterly. The argument sounded weak even inside his head.

 _It’s for the greater good,_ he told himself. _Charles was trying to start a war._

Erik stared at the moon through the tiny hole he’d made and wondered, vaguely, when it had all gotten so fucked up.

 _The chess match,_ he guessed, and tried not to remember the warm fire, Charles’s laughter, the buzz of scotch on his tongue and the tight, hot feeling in his chest that leaped every time he looked Charles in the eye.

 _Killing will not bring you peace._

 _I know._

Erik turned the television back on and watched the blue, flickering screen. He did not go back to sleep, and he could still taste Cuba on his tongue.

His back hurt.

He thought it always would.

***

Breakfast was quiet. Alex wasn’t looking at anyone but Erik, watching him eat mechanically. Raven seemed to know something was wrong; she fixed her yellow eyes on her cereal and waited. Hank shifted, nervous, perhaps smelling the tension in the air. Even Sean, who was usually cheerful even if he didn’t feel like it, sat and ate in silence, tense as if expecting a blow.

Erik ate his cereal quickly and tried to pretend it didn’t feel like rocks in his throat. His spoon vibrated in his hands.

“Oh my God,” Raven said suddenly, pushing her breakfast aside and pinning Erik with her eyes. He glared, rattling her spoon warningly. She, as per usual, ignored him. “Just spit it out already,” she snapped. “The tension’s killing us.”

Erik carefully took another bite of cereal, aware that they were all watching him. His face betrayed nothing. Slowly he set the spoon down and pushed his mostly-empty bowl away, meeting everyone’s eyes one at a time.

They all looked at him apprehensively, nervously.

“Charles,” he said softly, “has been captured by the CIA. They called early this morning.”

“Charles is in _custody?_ ” Raven’s eyes flashed a confusing mixture of worry and hurt. “Federal custody?”

Erik nodded.

“Where are they keeping him?” Raven’s fingers were curled tight around the edges of the table. She suddenly blazed with a fire that had been missing for months, and Erik remembered with a sharp, sudden pain that she’d been sleeping in Charles’s room for weeks now.

“Langley,” he said. “I’ve been ordered to go on Monday.”

“I’m coming,” Raven said immediately, standing up like they were leaving right that moment.

“No,” Erik told her. “You’re not. None of you are.”

Instantly the table exploded with violent protests.

“We have to go!”  
“It’s _Charles,_ we need to talk to him—”

“He’s my brother—”

“ _Enough,_ ” Erik said, and the silverware rattled against the table. “None of you are going.”

“Why not?” Raven’s eyes glittered dangerously.

“I am not taking you into the CIA base of operations. They don’t know about all of you. They know about me, and that’s it. They think I’m alone. I plan to keep it that way.”

“We’re not kids,” Sean said. “We’ve got a right to chose. I want to go.”

Hank growled in agreement, showing his teeth.

“No,” Erik said flatly.

“You can’t keep us from going,” Raven said. “It’s _Charles_ , Erik, what’s he going to do—”

“Leave us again.” It was Alex who said it, glaring at them all.

“He wouldn’t—”  
“He would. Grow up, Raven, he left us once, he’ll do it again. There’s no point in going to see him.”

Raven’s whole body flickered and she glared, anger rolling off her in waves. “You’re wrong,” she said. “Charles loves us. He’s just… confused. We can talk to him, make him see that he’s wrong, it’ll all be okay again—”

“Raven,” Erik cut in sharply, harsher than he meant to.

The shapeshifter looked at him with wet amber eyes. “You’re wrong,” she whispered. “You’re wrong, Erik, I’m sorry, you’re wrong.” She shoved out from the table and all but sprinted out of the dining room. Erik heard her feet on the stairs and he sighed, frustrated.

He didn’t know what to do.

Hank looked after Raven and growled lowly in the back of his throat before pushing himself up and following her, his clawed feet thumping heavily on the stairs.

Sean looked out the window, at the fridge, anywhere but Erik and Alex. “Um,” he said. “Professor, may I be, um, excused?”

“Go,” Erik muttered, dismissing him with a hand. He didn’t even order Sean not to call him Professor; he didn’t want to deal with it right now. He wanted to, to—

(curl up and sleep, rewind the clock about two years, chase Shaw to Argentina on a different day, and never meet these people at all)

“Prof,” Alex said. “About last night—”

“Alex,” Erik interrupted.

“Right,” the younger mutant said, also standing to go. “Make sure you eat some fruit or something, I’ll keep everyone out of your hair. Try not to wreck the mansion. I’ll get everyone training, okay, just take a break and chill the fuck out. You’re gonna kill someone by Monday, and it’s not gonna be me.”

Erik stared at him, surprised.

Alex rolled his eyes, grabbed the bowls of cereal, and left for the kitchen, leaving Erik sitting at the table alone in a house full of angry, hurt young mutants.

 _Charles,_ Erik thought, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes. The pain in his back flared up again, jagged, white-hot. _Charles, you’re going to kill me._

  
 **2.**

Three days passed slowly. Raven avoided him completely, all but barricading herself in Charles’s old room. Sean spent most of his time flying, endlessly looping and screaming and twisting in the sky. Hank had a suitcase half-packed in his lab; he thought Erik didn’t know about it, but Erik did. The suitcase had been half-packed for three months now, and Erik knew it was only a matter of time.

Only Alex still spoke to and spent time around Erik willingly, dropping in every few hours to make sure he was eating, sleeping, and “chilling the fuck out so he didn’t fucking kill anyone with paperclips, Jesus.”

The whole time Erik watched the news, or read the papers, or stared out the windows with the taste of scotch and saltwater in his mouth, trying to rid himself of Charles’s wide blue eyes and the memory of Cuba.

On Monday morning, Erik slipped quietly out of the mansion at dawn and took the car down to New York City, waiting at LaGuardia for four hours before the car drove up.

When it did pull up, he got in without question and didn’t say a word during the entire ride, all the way to Langley and the front doors where Stryker was waiting smugly, beckoning him inside.

“Mr. Lehnsherr,” he said, as suits surrounded them. Erik watched them tiredly, looking deep into the hallways as though Charles was standing there, waiting for him. “This way, please.”

The sun rapidly disappeared as they went through door after door, deeper and deeper into the building. The CIA suits flanked him, two on each side. Stryker prowled in front, triumph rolling off of him in waves, and Erik smirked because they were in a building made of steel; if he wanted to, he could kill them all and free Charles, and they’d never catch him.

But he wouldn’t. He already had his chance to _do_ something about the CIA; he didn’t act then, and he won’t act now. The consequences now were the same as they were in August. Mutants were still a fledgling race, disorganized, and separated. War would still destroy them, and Erik wouldn’t lose another people. He would protect them, even if it meant _this_ , meant tolerating _their_ hate, _their_ arrogance, _their_ fear.

 _There are some good ones,_ he reminded himself. _Do not judge an entire people based on the actions of a few._

They moved down the hallways and the metal sang to Erik, sighing, calling to him. He memorized as much of the floor plan as he could, out of habit ( _just in case_ ), and tried not to look at the men who walked beside him and kept their hands on their weapons.

This was nothing like the facility where they’d trained, when Charles’s people had been the CIA’s pet project. This place was a maze, all stark, grim hallways and sharp corners. Erik didn’t see any rec rooms or lounges; just cold interrogation rooms and blank cells, one after the other.

It was a little too like Auschwitz’s research facilities for his liking, and he clamped down on his power, trying to keep it from leaking out.

 _Charles,_ he called, more to distract himself than anything. He didn’t expect Charles to answer, of course, but it was worth a shot.

 _I’m sorry,_ Erik said. _It was for the greater good._

Charles didn’t answer; either he couldn’t hear or he was too angry to reply, and Erik stopped calling out to him.

The agents walked for several minutes, flanking him, hedging him in, and they stopped in front of a locked steel door. There were no windows, no bars, no gaps; only smooth, endless steel and a heavy lock.

 _Charles,_ Erik thought, and fought back the urge to rip the door off its hinges.

Another group of agents came from the opposite end of the hallway, all armed and grim-faced, and one of them carried a silver box. They glared at Erik, knowing what he was, perhaps, and handed the silver box to Stryker.

“Put this on,” Stryker said. In his hand there was suddenly a helmet made of smooth, shining metal; it called out to Erik and he stared at it, horrified.

“That’s Shaw’s,” he said, and the numbers carved into his arm seemed to burn.

“He can’t touch you out here,” Stryker explained, and Erik heard the cruelty in his voice. He knew what this helmet was. He knew what it meant. “We plated his cell with the anit-telepath mirrors from the submarine. His telepathy can’t get out. But once you’re in there he can use all his powers on you. This stops that. We can’t have him taking control over you.”

 _They’re learning._

“I’m not wearing that,” Erik said flatly, and the building shook a little, tremors shooting up the walls. The helmet was exactly the same, even a year and a half later, down to the dent in the side where Erik had thrown his coin and knocked it loose, and then Charles had—

The building shook harder. The suits twitched, nervously fingering their weapons, watching the walls ripple and tremble. He didn’t have to be a mind reader to see that they wanted to lock him up too, and his students, his entire _race_ , and anger swelled hot and familiar in his gut.

 _Maybe Charles is right,_ said that little part of him that Shaw created. _They hate us._

 _There’s always good,_ he said back to it, remembering his mother, his daughter, the men who took him from the camps even as he howled and fought and tried to claw out their eyes. _There are Nazis_ and _those who fight them. Not all humans are our enemy._

 _Keep telling yourself that._

“Put it on,” said Stryker gleefully. “Or you don’t go in.”

Erik glared, but he would give in and the agent knew it. “Fine,” he bit out, and took the helmet. It wasn’t as heavy as he thought it would be. The metal hummed in his hands, friendly and familiar as any other metal, and he saw Shaw for a second, smiling, friendly _Herr Doktor_ , so strong and clear he tasted the sea in his mouth and felt the heat of the sun, the grit of the sand, the crack of the gun and the missiles—

He put the helmet on and felt something heavy shake in his gut, and Stryker smiled, cold and cruel and satisfied, a Nazi of his own little world.

Erik hated him at that moment. The building shuddered one last time, lights flickering, walls groaning, and then it was still.

“You have ten minutes,” said Stryker, and he opened the cold steel door.

Erik wanted to say that his breath caught, that his heart twisted, that his mind sang out and _knew,_ but it didn’t. The door opened and he felt nothing but guilt that tasted like saltwater in the back of his throat.

Charles sat at a simple table in the middle of the stark room and he smiled when he saw Erik. The smile made Erik’s chest tight—it was the _same,_ even after everything that had happened. It was still that smile that made you feel like you were the center of the world, that he was hanging on to your every word, and Erik didn’t want to look at it.

Charles’s eyes were soft and sad and gentle, such a contrast to before at the beach that Erik’s hands went weak and he almost did blow a hole in the wall and take Charles with him, back home to Westchester, to the mansion, to _his_ students.

“My friend,” said Charles. “You came.”

 _Always,_ Erik almost said. He dipped his head and the helmet felt strange, unbalancing him. Charles looked at it oddly, his face dark and unreadable.

“They wouldn’t let me in without it,” Erik felt compelled to explain. “Stryker thinks you’ll take control of me and escape using my abilities.

Charles nodded. “My telepathy can’t get out of this room,” he said quietly, and his eyes went hard (Jesus, when did _that_ happen?) as the door swished shut. “But once someone’s in here, they’re mine.”

Erik looked at him and he was _sad_ for a moment, overwhelmingly sad, and Charles must’ve pick up on it because he smiled again and waved a dismissive hand.

“I wouldn’t hurt you like that,” Charles said. “Never, do you understand?”

Erik smiled sadly because he _did_ , he really fucking did.

“I’m surprised they let you in here, actually.” Charles was looking everywhere but Erik’s eyes. “With a power like yours. They underestimate you, don’t they?”

Erik shrugged and tried to look uncaring. “Most likely. They certainly don’t underestimate you, though.” He looked around; the room was full of shining submarine-metal, reflecting dull, blurred images of the two men. “Can you hear anyone’s thoughts at all?”

The smile Charles gave him was raw and open. “No,” he said, and Erik thought he heard a note of fear. “No one at all.”

 _He’s lonely,_ Erik realized. _Utterly, truly alone._ “The children wanted to come see you,” he said.

“You didn’t let them, did you?”

“No.”

“Good,” Charles murmured, still not looking at Erik. This close, Erik could see a faint bruise on the back of his next—needle mark, he was familiar with those—and more on the insides of his wrists. Fingerprints. Someone had grabbed Charles, hard, and held him down while a needle was shoved in his neck.

Fury roared in his blood, white-hot, and the entire room rattled. He tasted blood and iron on his tongue and his fingers curled, denting the walls.

“Erik,” Charles said, and grabbed one of his hands. “Erik, you must calm down, they’ll take you away from me—”

Abruptly Erik breathed out, forcing it down, bottling it up. Later, back at the mansion, he would rip something apart, tear it to molecules, but now, here, he couldn’t.

“I’m fine,” he said, through gritted teeth.

Charles laughed a little. “How is the school going?” He was trying to get Erik talking, get his mind off of his overwhelming _anger,_ and the gesture is so _Charles_ Erik wants to, to—

“Good,” he said instead, thinking of the kids who had somehow grown, these last few months, and weren't really kids anymore. He still thought of them as children, though, and probably always would. “We’re thinking about expanding, finding some new children, making it into a proper school.”

“That’s good,” Charles said, almost wistfully, and Erik remembered long nights of chess and scotch and dream of the future, their future, and he hated what they have become.

 _They miss you,_ Erik didn’t say. _They call me Professor Magneto. Sean stopped asking about you two months ago and Raven still sleeps in your room. Hank is thinking about leaving us and Alex makes sure I eat at least twice a day. Moira’s been missing for a year now; the kids think she’s been killed. They’re scared. We fought three days ago; I don’t want to lose them. I need you. I don’t know if I can do this on my own._

“They think you’ll take over me,” he said again, suddenly instead of all these little things that were cracking inside of him. “Force me to use my power to break you out. That’s why they’re making me wear the helmet. They had to have gotten the idea from somewhere. They have to know.”

Charles looked away and Cuba swelled between them.

“Would you?” Erik asked softly.

Charles didn’t answer.

“Would you, Charles?”

Charles looked him in the eye and his eyes were the color of the Cuban skies. “I did it once,” he said bitterly, harshly, as if the words were causing him actual pain. “Who’s to say I won’t again?”

Erik bowed his head. “My friend,” he said heavily. “I’m so sorry.”

“Why?” Charles snapped. “It’s not your fault, you didn’t make me—”

“I told them your name,” Erik murmured. “They asked me, back in August, who X was. And I told them.”

Charles reeled back suddenly, eyes wide as if he had been punched.

“In return, they promised not to torture mutants, to treat the Friends of Humanity as terrorists, and the Anti-Mutant laws didn’t pass.”

Charles was silent, his eyes vivid and cracked.

“The greater good,” Erik said softly, and he wanted to take off the helmet, to _show_ Charles what he felt, the anger, the guilt, the saltwater taste he couldn’t seem to get rid off.

“Erik.”

“I’m sorry, Charles.”

“Stay,” said Charles suddenly, explosively, reaching out and grabbing his hand. “Please. Stay with me. We’ll talk this out. We’ll be together again. Think of what we could do, as us. We could make the world safe for our people. Please, Erik. _We want the same thing.”_

Erik was, for the first and final time, grateful for Shaw’s helmet because Charles would never hear his heart crack in two.

“Oh my dear friend,” Erik said, as he turned to go. “No we do not.”

“Erik!” Charles stood, sharp and sudden and there was fire in his eyes. “Wait.”

Erik stopped by the door and his eyes were closed.

“I’m sorry too, my friend,” Charles said, barely louder than a whisper. “I never meant to—meant to hurt you, that day. It wasn’t your fault. I had to stop them, you must understand. I had to stop them and I was _there,_ in their minds, and they wanted to kill us, all of us, even the children because of what we are.”

Erik smiled crookedly but Charles didn’t see it, and he remembered Cuba and Charles and painpainpain in his back, in his mind, his hands stretching out against his will and his body shuddering and the crack of Moira’s gun and finally nothing as he lay in the sand and couldn’t feel his legs.

“It was an accident,” Charles said quietly, pleadingly. “You weren’t supposed to get hurt.”

Erik nods once. “I know, my friend,” he said. “It was for the greater good.” And then he flicked a finger and wheeled himself out the door.

  
 **3.**

Charles watched Erik wheel himself out and trembled. The door was only open for a few seconds but his mind reached out anyway, almost against his will, and bounced back _hard_ as soon as the door slammed shut.

Charles Xavier shook.

He missed Erik already, the sight of him, the sound of his voice. It had been nearly a year and half since Charles had seen him, or heard him speak, and he _missed_ it.

He’d seen the children, of course. He hadn’t shown himself to them, but he’d seen them, through Angel, Riptide, and Azazel. The two groups had clashed a few times, over the months, though mostly the Brotherhood stuck to fighting the Friends of Humanity.

But Charles hadn’t seen Erik, and he’d needed to _know_ —

( _how badly you damaged him,_ the voices whispered, bouncing off the walls, crazy, howling, he couldn’t let them out. _how much he hates you now._ )

The door clicked, a lock turning, and Charles was alone. Someone would come by later, of course, wearing a fucking helmet, just like Shaw’s, their thoughts sealed off from him, and they’d poke and prod and try to see what they could pull out of Charles.

 _Nothing,_ he thought fearlessly, and it echoed and bounced back at him, _too loud_ —

Charles would give them nothing.

He knew what they wanted. He’d been living in other people’s heads since before he could _walk_ —he knew what they _all_ wanted.

Money, sex, power, the newest this, the best that. Charles knew what humans desired. And he knew what they’d do to get it, too.

Men like Stryker, like half the government, it seemed, would always do the same thing, to get what they wanted. They would kill. Not directly, of course. They were too “civilized” to do it themselves, instead manipulating others to maim and wound and destroy for them.

( _They want to kill us—_ )

Others like the Friends of Humanity, who were all evil and anger and raw, starving hate, others like the frightened, vulnerable mutants of the world, who didn’t know how to use their own powers, let alone wage a war. Others like Erik, who were desperate to protect their families or friends.

 _(or lovers,_ laughed the voices. Charles flinched.)

A mass of feeling, the captured telepath offered the door a mirthless smile before standing and pacing, around and around the mirror-paneled room.

He missed Erik. He’d shouted thoughts at the helmet, hurled them like bullets, and they’d just bounced back. Nothing he’d said had gotten through. Not that he expected it too, really, but still, he _wanted—_

 _Too late for that,_ he thought to himself. _Much, much too late. It’s been a year…_

Charles shook the thoughts out of his head and kept pacing, around and around. He didn’t know if he was being watched— he doubted it, he couldn’t see how they would do so, unless they had a telepath on their side—and if he was, well, they’d think he was a crazy, damaged psychopath, which might actually be an improvement from _genocidal,_ crazy psychopath.

( _They want to kill us—_ )

Humans, Charles had learned, were not too bright.

They seemed to think, for bizarre reasons he couldn’t quite figure out, that Charles was somehow going to massacre them all. Which was preposterous. Even if he had the _means_ to do such a thing—wipe out something like _ninety percent of the world’s population_ —he wouldn’t. Genetically, every human had the potential to create a mutant, and every mutant, at least when paired with a human, had the potential to create a human.

Humanity was currently the dominate trait in their species, after all. Mutantism was recessive, and would remain so for some time. Killing off the humans would only limit the gene pool.

 _Besides_ , Charles thought, _I’m not sure I want them dead. Not all of them hate mutants. Just… most of them._

No, Charles Xavier did not want to kill off the humans. He just wanted them to leave his people alone. He wanted them to stop torturing and killing and suppressing his race, which had only just been shoved into the light.

And he’d make them stop, because he _could._

( _I want to—_ )

He paced, around and around, his footsteps echoing off the mirrors, terribly, unnaturally loud, but at least they drowned out his fucking _thoughts_ —

 _I’m going crazy in here._

The absence of _thought_ , of other minds whirling and buzzing right against his own, was driving him _mad._ He needed others’ minds, needed them like a human needed air or Erik needed metal. This mirror-lined cage was going to kill him.

Or, at best, drive him mad enough that the government could justify killing him. After all, what did one do with a rabid dog, except put it down?

It didn’t matter if the dog wasn’t actually rabid, just a little unusual; a dog perceived as rabid was a dangerous dog, and should be put down before he infected others.

Before they’d taken him out—sneakily, actually, like _cowards_ instead the real “righteous” soldiers they claimed to be—Charles had caught their thoughts, a hundred thousand howling hurricanes. The Americans were afraid that he would incite their mutant populations to revolt, that he’d draw them out from their rightful place and bring war down on good, innocent human heads.

Charles fought back the urge to sneer. He wanted mutants to be safe, so that made him a terrorist. He wanted to give his terrified, threatened people the tools to fight back, so that made him the villain.

He could live with that. He didn’t much care for what the masses thought, anyway—and if he really wanted, he could _change_ their thinking, make him see _his_ way, just maybe, if he pushed hard enough—so their names, their petty labels, didn’t mean much.

Locking him in a box, though, where all he could hear was his own thoughts, meant something.  
It meant that, every second, he was losing his grip on his powers. He needed to touch others minds, he _needed it,_ and all he could hear was his guilt—

( _Erik, Erik, I’m so sorry, I never wanted to hurt you, they were going to_ kill _us, I read it in their minds_ —)

It meant war.

Charles Xavier, by nature, was not a violent man. These last few months he’d become one, of course, out of necessity, but he much preferred the subtle, bloodless telepathic shifting to an all-out brawl.

And right now, he was wild enough to kill someone.

He paced, and shook, and his thoughts flew out of his head and tore back, razor-edged, through him.

( _Erik I’m so sorry—_

 _They’re going to kill us all—_

 _I didn’t want—_

 _I want—_

 _I’m sorry—_

 _I don’t want to kill—_

 _But they do—_

 _They do—_

 _I can_ hear _them—_

 _I want to—_

 _I’m so sorry—_

 _I_ want to—

 _Erik—_ )

And something in Charles Xavier just… _snapped._  


**4.**

He got back to the mansion just before dusk, as the sun was sliding away and the trees, budding with life, rattled in the wind.

It was almost Gothic, in a way, like an old story wreathed in beautiful nature while the world itself was rotting.

 _Poetic,_ Erik thought, and creaked open the door.

Naturally, the children were waiting for him.

It was bizarre, how quiet and intense they were. Erik had seen them this way exactly twice; once right after Cuba, and then again when the Brotherhood had been declared terrorists, _alive-or-dead_ bounties attached to its members.

It never boded well.

“So?” Raven broke the silence first, her eyes flinty and yellow and hard.

Erik blinked, slowly hung up his coat and hat, sent the briefcase floating down the hall towards his study.

“He is alive,” he said slowly, carefully. His English felt frayed—he’d never done well in this language, especially when he was upset.

“Is he okay? Did they hurt him?”

“I didn’t see any serious injuries,” Erik said, evading the first part of the question. “He appeared well enough, considering."

“Considering?” Alex’s voice was as neutral as it had ever been, his eyes sharp, wary.

 _Mein Gott,_ Erik thought. _He has grown._

“He’s in federal custody, in a telepath-proof box,” Erik said flatly. “I don’t know how well he’s doing. He was coherent enough to talk to me, and he knew where he was and what was going on, but I—”  
He cut off abruptly, unsure of what he had meant to say.

 _Couldn’t read him like I used to be able to. Didn’t know him well enough to_ understand _what he’s thinking._

“A telepath-proof box?” Raven jumped in, concern shimmering on her face. Flashes of others rippled through her hands. “Does it—does it hurt him?”

Erik shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s cut off—no one’s thoughts but his own. I don’t know what that’ll do to him.”

The shapeshifter’s face darkened, unreadable, and Hank shifted around her protectively. Funny how that had happened, since Cuba, since he’d discovered his true shape.

“He’s never been without it,” Raven said. “He told me so. He’s been able to hear everyone’s minds since he could _walk,_ he’s never been without it.”

Erik didn’t look away. He couldn’t.

“What has the Brotherhood been doing since Cuba?” he asked quietly.

Raven drew back, confused.

“I don’t—”

“Tell me,” Erik said, and let his old steel slip into his voice. “Tell me exactly what Charles and his people have been doing since last October.”

Raven didn’t meet his eyes. “Fought the Friends of Humanity,” she whispered. “Avenged mutant casualties.”

“Blew up a building,” Erik said, counting off on his fingers. “Beat people in the streets. Sent the media threatening letters. _Murdered_ people, in some cases.”

“They deserved it,” Raven blurted. “All the people Char—the Brotherhood’s hurt, they deserved it, they hurt us first—”

“We cannot think like that anymore,” Erik said. “Charles led the Brotherhood in terrorist activities. He _killed people._ ”

“ _You_ killed people,” Raven shot back. “The Nazis, Shaw, you killed them because they killed your people. How is _that_ any different?”

Erik gritted his teeth. He didn’t want to have this conversation. “Look what happened because of it,” he said. “Look what’s become of my vendetta. I killed Shaw, and as a result I almost started World War Three.”

Raven set her mouth in a thin, angry line. “But you were _right,_ ” she insisted. “You weren’t trying to hurt anyone, you just wanted to—”

“You’re not getting the point,” he snapped. “Charles has killed humans. _Killed them,_ and publicly, too. He’s made no effort to hide it. Do you understand what that looks like to them?”

Under her skin, Raven was the color of ash. “It looks like an act of war,” she said hoarsely. “Like mutants are trying to—But they attacked us first!”

Erik shrugged. “So?” he said. “It doesn’t matter. War is war, and we _cannot survive one,_ not right now. _Think,_ Raven. There are several thousand mutants in the world, probably more, and over _three billion humans._ We aren’t organized. We aren’t connected. We are, at best, several small groups trying to hold back a flood. We can’t win.”

He turned his head, looked her in the eye. “We’ll die, or watch our people die,” he said softly, gently. “Charles wants to help us, I believe that. He wants mutants to be _safe,_ so we can survive, and grow. But he’s going about it the wrong way.”

“He’s going to get us killed,” Alex said, and he looked just as tired as Erik felt.

Raven held Erik’s gaze, her eyes vivid and sad. “Don’t,” she whispered. “I know what you’re—I know what you’re saying, just—Don’t. Please.”

Erik did. “I’m going to be in my study,” he said. “Go train. Spar each other. Fight the emotion out, so you don’t blow up later. It—it’ll be alright, Raven. Just… go, for a little while.”

One by one, each student left, shuffling downstairs towards the basement. Raven met his eyes, and so did Alex, but Hank and Sean wouldn’t. Sean’s was more out of respect, Erik knew, and uncertainty, but Hank’s… Hank’s seemed conflicted, somehow, and their teacher—still odd, that word. It felt _wrong,_ somehow, like it belonged to someone else—felt his instincts stir.

“Hank,” he said quietly, as the blue-furred young man passed. “Come see me later.”

Hank nodded and walked quickly away, joining Raven, hesitantly, comfortingly brushing her shoulder.  
Erik watched them go, and slowly turned around and wheeled himself into his study.

Through the small window, he could see the grounds, and the satellite dish looming in the distance. The trees rattled in the wind.

He smiled, humorlessly, and tried to think of anything but Charles, locked in a gleaming cage.

  
 **5.**

“You wanted to see me?” Hank shifted from foot to clawed foot, leaning in the shadow of the doorway.

Erik looked up tiredly, beckoned him in. “You’re leaving,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.  
Hank stiffened. “You know?”

The professor offered him a small grin. “You’ve done well keeping it from the others. But I used to run for a living, Hank. I know the signs.”

The younger mutant shifted rebelliously, the fur bristling on his shoulders.

“I won’t stop you,” Erik said softly, and Hank startled, blinking behind his glasses.

“Really?”

“Really. If you truly want to go, forcing you to stay will only make you bitter. Besides,” he added, with a slight, twisting grin, “it’s natural for a young man to want to wander. It will be good for you, to find people who can match your intelligence and interests.”

Fur spiked anxiously on Hank’s shoulders. “Even looking like this?”

“Even looking like that,” Erik said, sharper than he’d meant to. “You’re intelligent, and brave, and there is nothing wrong with you. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Hank blinked, shoulders tense. “Raven’s been telling me that for months now,” he admitted dully.

Erik snorted. “You should listen to her. She knows what she’s talking about.”

The scientist shrugged. “I guess.”

“So will you leave?”

Hank blinked again, half-turned away. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I want to—I want to rejoin the research field. Maybe I can help the government understand mutants better, you know? Before some bigoted idiot writes our genetic code off as a mistake or something.”

Erik nodded. “An admirable goal. You’ll do well.”

“Before I go, do you want me to rebuild Cerebro?” Hank asked, suddenly, and Erik tried not to twitch, unsettled. He remembered his conversation with the Board months previously, and how eager they’d been to have Cerebro under their power.

“No,” he said.

“Are you sure? If you find a telepath, it could be useful.”

“No.”

Hank held up furry paws. “Alright,” he said. “I get it. No Cerebro.” He backed out, pausing at the door. “Thanks,” he muttered. “And could you, um, not tell Raven? I’ll tell her, when I’m ready to go.”

 _Ah, young love._ Erik dipped his head. “I won’t tell.”

“Thanks,” Hank whispered, and left.

Alone again, Erik rubbed his forehead, trying to soothe out the frustrated creases. _I can feel my hair turning gray,_ he thought wryly, and tried to focus, shifting through piles and piles of paper.

One sheet was the singular most important piece of paper in the mansion; a list of maybe thirty possible recruits, young mutants just discovering their powers and the prejudice that came with it.  
These children, thirty out of the hundreds, thousands, maybe _millions_ of mutant children out there in the world, were the future of his school.

And he couldn’t take all thirty of them. The list was to determine which ones he could take, based on their powers, family life, and means. The ones with the most dangerous powers, bad family situations, and no means of controlling said powers would come first. Then the rest of them, later, as the school grew.

It felt… big. He wasn’t a teacher. Three years ago, his only goal in life had been hunting down the man who murdered his mother, and now he was thinking of raising _children._

He almost laughed. Charles was much better with kids.

 _Charles._

His chest was tight.

He wondered how Charles was doing, in his shining, seamless prison. Not well, probably. Stripped of his power, alone, probably half-mad with pain and fury and loss.

The lights flickered out suddenly, and Erik blinked, releasing his ability. The lamp on his desk warped, cracking, and plunged his study into darkness.

He couldn’t see the list anymore.

 _Charles._

Was it right to leave him there? Alone, power cut from him?

 _Charles wouldn’t leave you,_ something whispered. _If the tables were turned, he wouldn’t leave you…_

 _No,_ Erik thought dully. _I suppose he wouldn’t._

He mechanically fixed the lamp, and light flared back into existence. He stared at it, and ran a hand through his hair.

 _Well,_ he thought, already moving out to call for the children. _I guess I’m breaking into the CIA._

***

“Let’s go,” Raven said instantly, bolting to her feet.

“Sit down,” Alex snapped, his eyes fixed on Erik. “This is a bad idea.”

“How can you say that?” the shapeshifter hissed, livid eyes flashing. “He’s _Charles._ We’re not going to hurt anyone; we’re just going to go in, get him, and leave.”

“ _He_ could hurt people, though,” Alex argued back. “He’s not exactly a friendly guy anymore, in case you haven’t noticed. The Brotherhood’s _killed_ people, Raven. Charles can’t kill anyone where he is.”

Raven turned to Erik, searching.

“I want to free him,” Erik said quietly. “No one deserves to be locked away, alone, stripped of their powers. And I’ve convinced the government to punish the Friends of Humanity for their anti-mutant acts. That should reduce Brotherhood strikes; they’re all retaliatory, anyway.” _For now._

“I’m with the Prof,” Sean said, and his face was uncharacteristically sober and fierce. “Charles was our _friend,_ guys. He taught us how to use our powers. He’s not evil. He’s not some comic book supervillian, trying to spread death and shit. He just wants us to be _safe._ ”

Alex’s expression was sour, and he looked Erik up and down.

“We should do it,” Hank chimed in. His claws dug into the table wood, but he was mostly composed. “We owe it to him, just this once.”

 _Don’t,_ Alex’s eyes said, but he sighed. “You’re right,” he admitted grudgingly. “We do owe him. Without him, we’d still be a bunch of angry, scared kids running around blowing shit up, right?”

Erik leaned back. They all agreed with him, then. They were going to get Charles.

“You have a new jet, yes?”

Hank nodded eagerly. “I improved it from the last one significantly, actually. It functions on a—”

“Not now,” Erik cut him off. “Later, perhaps. Will it fly?”

“Yeah.”  
“Good,” Magneto nodded, dragging a hand through his hair. “Very good.”

“What’s the plan?” Alex kept watching his professor, eyes sharp and searching.

“I need you to create a distraction,” Erik said. “In the back, preferably, so they all leave the front of the building alone. I can slip in while they’re busy dealing with you all and free Charles. Then we can meet at the plane and get away before the CIA realizes what’s happened.

“And we can always blame it on the Brotherhood,” he added, catching Alex’s narrowed eyes and opened mouth.

The blonde mutant nodded, rolling his eyes as if to say _you’re going to kill me one of these days you crazy old man, I fucking know it._

Erik was actually sort of touched.

“Sounds like a plan,” Raven said, standing again. “Should we suit up?”

Erik nodded. “Go. I’ll meet you in the hangar in twenty.”

The young mutants nodded and shot out of the kitchen, scrambling to get to their battle suits. Only Alex stayed behind, his face thoughtful.

“You’ll be okay?” he said gruffly.

Erik resisted the urge to sigh. “Yes. I have been doing this for a while, you know.”

Alex stared at him, and Erik couldn’t help but remember doctors, and hospital rooms, and the sinking feeling in his gut as he realized he didn’t have the use of his legs, not anymore.

He forced it away.

“Go suit up,” he told Alex, not unkindly. “I’m alright.”

“If you say so,” Havok muttered, and gave him one last long, studying glance before following the others.

 _That boy,_ Erik thought, turning his mind to the task at hand. He needed to get in, get Charles, and get out, hopefully without any injuries.

He could do this.

Maybe.

He made his way down to the hangar, and waited.

  
 **6.**

Virginia smelled like springtime, and Erik blew warmth into his fingers and waited. On the far side of the complex, he heard faint, rumbling explosions and even fainter screaming; the children were at work.

He hoped they’d be alright. They had been, on the missions they’d done so far. They were good, and careful, and under explicit orders to hide themselves as much as possible while flinging destruction far and wide.

They’d be okay.

From his vantage point, Erik watched as the guards ran off down the hallways one by one, summoned by their fellows. Red light glowed dimly in the distance, followed by a tremendous bang.

 _Alex._

Soon there was only one nervous, shifty-eyed guard watching the front left, and Erik grinned to himself. Excellent.

He pulled, tugging on the strings of his power, and a paperweight clubbed the guard in the back of the head. He crumbled soundlessly, and Erik slid through the open doors, letting his metal-sense grow and expand.

There were a few more guards between him and Charles’s room. The masses were at the opposite end of the base, trying to deal with his students. Along the way, caches of weapons rattled and electricity pulsed, calling out to him, available, if he wanted it.

He smiled. He’d _missed_ this, sneaking in places, hearing the metal, his constant, truest ally, call out to him, singing a blood-song. He missed the hunt, and the kill, and his fingers itched.

 _No,_ he told himself. _Those days are behind me._

He began to move, carefully rolling himself through the complex. With his ability, he opened locked doors with ease, slipping deeper and deeper into the base. Every now and then he paused, to disable a guard or to listen, feeling out the surrounding rooms.

About halfway through, he paused, and frowned.

He felt Shaw’s helmet, and it sang to him.

Without thinking he opened the door and saw it gleaming on a table, burnished in the low light, still faintly shimmery, still dented.

He didn’t want to touch it.

( _“my dear friend,” charles whispered in his memory. “i’m so sorry.”_

 _he can taste cuba in his mouth, and feel the hot sand beneath his fingers, and a burning pain in his back, and then nothing._ )

Erik quietly picked up the helmet, cradling it in his lap, and moved on.

***

Stryker was afraid.

There were mutants in his base.

The western side was under siege, pounded by sonic waves and red, glowing, _burning_ sunlight, and something huge lurked in the shadows and men ran from corridors screaming of a changeling.

Mutants were in his base, and Lehnsherr was to blame, Stryker _knew_ it.

Never trust a mutant. He’d given Lehnsherr what he wanted; immunity for himself and a guarantee that the government wouldn’t pass anti-mutant bills and they’d treat the Friends just like the Brotherhood.

It was absurd. As if humans—even some of the crazier ones that populated the Friends—were as dangerous as a mutant!

No one in the Friends could shoot fire, or bend metal, or rip thoughts and memories from a mind. At worst the Friends could shoot someone. Big freaking deal. Shootings happened all the time, and the public didn’t care.

But mutants, _mutants—!_

Stryker slammed on a helmet and walked quickly down the hall.

Lehnsherr’s people were coming for X. There was no other explanation for it. Lehnsherr and X had been friends, this much was obvious, and now Lehnsherr was covering for his buddy. Simple.

Stryker wouldn’t let it happen.

He quickly punched in the codes and unlocked X’s cell door. “Hey,” he snapped, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. “Up, up, I’m moving you—”

X hit him, _hard,_ around the middle, and they went down.

Stryker’s breath _whoosed_ out of him and he gasped, struggling, flailing out and punching the mutant in the jaw.

X snarled, scrambling, and kneed the human in his large gut. Stryker grunted, clawing at X’s face, and his hands came away bloody but that didn’t seem to stop the telepath at all—

 _He’s trying to get my helmet off!_ Stryker realized, and horrible, cold fear settled in his gut. He fought harder, clawing and kicking, shouting at the top of his lungs.

But the guards were gone, off trying to stop the onslaught to the western wing.

No one was close by. Stryker was on his own.

“No!” he gasped, clawing, punching. He tried to bite, and X growled, punched his face aside, his fingers grasping at the helmet—

Stryker howled, raking his fingers down X’s neck, and the mutant shouted, pain twisting his face, and he _tugged—_

The helmet came free.

Stryker had time to scream, as a hundred thousand fingers tore into his mind, and a single word rose above the howling storm—

 _DIE_

And Stryker did.

  
 **7.**

He stopped in front of the smooth metal door, and cradled the helmet in his hands. He shouldn’t. Charles had been alone in there for days now, with only his own thoughts for company. Another mind was _exactly_ what he needed, to help him calm down, relax, settle into himself again.

And yet—

And yet.

He couldn’t forget bullets, and his own hands shaking, rising against his will. He didn’t _want_ to forget.  
He turned Shaw’s helmet over and over in his hands, and the metal hummed, familiar. He traced the dent, and the scratches, and the gritty sand still wedges in the seams. The pads of his fingers ached, remembering the feel of sand.

He didn’t know what to do.

Go in without the helmet, and win Charles’s trust but run the risk of Cuba happening again, or go in with it on and destroy his trust (probably forever) but make sure Cuba didn’t happen?

Erik closed his eyes, and breathed. As much as Charles might need him now, without the helmet, the rest of the base, and by default the children, needed him shielded, so his power was his own.  
And the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few, no matter how much he cared for the few.

The helmet, cool and smooth and heavy in his hands, fit onto his head like it was meant to be there, and he fought the urge to scratch the numbers off his arm.

Erik reached out, and crumpled the door like paper.

Nothing moved.

Cautiously, Erik wheeled himself into the cell, hands outstretched, and rattled the walls gently.

“Charles,” he said softly, and scanned the darkness.

“Erik.” Charles was crouched against the wall, face drawn and pale. His hands shook, and scratches decorated his face, matted with half-dried blood. His fingertips were torn, and beside him was a dead body, and Erik’s chest hurt.

“Stryker,” he said, and reeled. He didn’t believe it. Charles had been leading the Brotherhood for months, yes, but he hadn’t personally _killed_ anyone. Never. Charles wasn’t a killer. He was—he was—

And he remembered Cuba, and the feel of missiles hanging in his power, and three thousand lives waiting to die.

And Charles made it happen.

“Why did you kill him?” Erik asked, and worked to keep his voice even. He drifted closer; Stryker’s nose was broken, and his face bruised, but there was no blood. “ _How_ did you kill him?”

The telepath offered him a twisted grin, and tapped his forehead. He looked bad; he hadn’t shaved in a few days, and the blood and bruises made him look less like a kindly professor and more like a deranged killer. “He was here,” he whispered, “and I couldn’t read his mind. So I took off the helmet, and got into his head, and he died."

Charles’s breath came in stuttering pants.

“He died, and I didn’t mean to, but he wanted to kill me, you, all of us, I can’t let him, I _didn’t_ let him--”

“Charles,” Erik snapped sharply, reaching out, trying to ground the other man. “Breathe, listen to me. Breathe. You have to breathe.”

“I killed him,” Charles said, eyes wild. “I’ve never—”

“He deserved it,” Erik cut in fiercely. “He was an evil man. He didn’t want peace, he wanted war, and our people to die, and he came to kill you; there’s a gun in his pocket.”

This seemed to calm the telepath, somewhat, and he gazed up at Erik with vivid eyes. “You came back,” he murmured. Another explosion rocked Langley. “You all came back?”

  
“It isn’t right to leave you here.”

Charles looked away. “Thank you,” he said, standing. His eyes flickered to the helmet, and his expression soured, but he didn’t say anything.

“Wait,” said Erik. “I’m not turning you loose yet. You have to promise me something first.”

Instantly, Charles’s eyes went from grateful to wary. “What?”

“Don’t try and start a war. Don’t fight with the government, unless they explicitly provoke you first.”

“They’re letting our people be slaughtered,” Charles snapped, hands balling into fists. “They’re letting the Friends of Humanity tear us to pieces.”

“I made them swear,” Erik countered, “to treat the Friends as they have treated the Brotherhood. I have it in writing. The government must be fair now; _both_ races will be held accountable.”

Charles’s teeth flashed in a snarl. “How can you stand here and argue with me? You know better than I the evil man is capable of, if he finds a people he wishes to exterminate.”

“There are Nazis,” Erik agreed. “There are people who want us dead, and will stop at nothing to do so. But not _all_ of them are like that! There are those who fight against Nazis too, who save children from death camps and smuggle the imprisoned out in the dead of night.”

“You spent your entire adult life hunting down Nazis! Killing them brutally!”

“But _only_ Nazis,” Erik snapped. “Not innocents. Never innocents. When you start killing the innocent, you’re asking for a _war,_ Charles, and our people can’t afford that.”

“Mutants are strong,” Charles argued. “And more are being born every day. We are the next stage in human evolution. Man cannot stop us if they try.”

“Perhaps not. But they can kill and hurt hundreds of thousands of us, until the day the last human dies. We _can_ coexist. Germans and Jews lived together for centuries before Hitler. Mutants and humans can do the same. But we _cannot survive a war._ We’re not organized yet. _Think,_ Charles.”  
The telepath frowned, lips pressing together, eyes flinty, hard.

“We are, at best, scattered groups,” Erik said, dropping his voice. “Divided. We can’t win, not against all of them.”

“We seem to be at an impasse, again, old friend,” Charles murmured. He leaned back, stepping away from the body.

“Promise me,” Erik said, unyielding, “that you will not kill anyone in this base, and that you won’t attack the humans unless provoked.”

Charles shook his head, hair flopping.

Erik’s eyes slid closed, and he fought down waves of memory—

(running, laughing, playing chess, brushing Charles’s ridiculous hair out of his eyes and leaning in—)

—before opening them to meet his old friend’s eyes. “Promise,” he said. “And I’ll let you go. There’s a parking lot not far from here. I’ll start a car for you, and you can drive back to your Brotherhood. The CIA won’t catch you again.”

“Fine,” Charles said. “I swear I will not kill anyone else here, and I’ll try not to start a war.”  
Erik kept his face still, and offered Charles his hand.

The telepath took it, and shook, face unreadable. Erik backed up, letting him pass, and he tried not to watch him go.

Charles paused at the door, gripping the frame with his bloody hands. “Thank you,” he said lowly, and then was gone.

Erik closed his eyes, reached out to the parking lot, and fired up a car. After several minutes, he felt the car begin to move, and then it drove away, farther, farther.

He breathed again.

Charles was out. He was free. The CIA didn’t have him.

 _I must find the children,_ he decided, and turned to go.

He stopped, looking at the body again. It wouldn’t do to have the government figure out what happened, after all the trouble they’d gone through to get Charles out.

The metal around the body began to dance, and Erik turned and left, searching for the children.

  
 **8.**

The car roared, and the streetlights lit the way to Chicago.

Charles Xavier held tightly onto the wheel, and he did not look back. He could still feel Langley, a scattered pulse of minds, and he could just _reach—_

 _No,_ he told himself, and held his thoughts in.

He’d promised Erik. And even though he was _furious_ with the other man, could feel the smooth, hard silence of the helmet, even from this distance, he’d keep that promise.

His hands were tight on the wheel. He was still well within range. It couldn’t hurt to just _push_ a little, here and there. Erik would never know. Hell, he _couldn’t_ know, because he was wearing Sebastian fucking Shaw’s helmet, and Charles couldn’t touch him.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

Charles turned, and stared straight ahead. He wouldn’t kill anyone else (but he _could—_ ). He’d just tweak, a little, protect Erik and the children. He owed them, after all. They’d chosen to rescue him, when they could’ve easily let him die.

He owed them.

Charles Xavier closed his eyes, reaching back with his power, feeling out the minds of CIA agents. Erik’s face, the children’s faces, swam in their thoughts, and Charles said _forget,_ and they did.

He pulled back into his own mind, and faced the road.

Chicago waited.

***

“Go, go, go,” Erik hissed, nudging the children along with his power, half-dragging them onto the plane and closing the doors behind them.

His ears and metal-sense strained, searching for bullets, for the belt buckles and cufflinks and handcuffs of the CIA.

They’d stopped following him.

Erik frowned, but didn’t test his luck. If the CIA wanted to let him go, he’d take it. He scanned the children quickly, confirming that nothing had been placed on them or himself, and nodded to Hank, clearing them for take off.

The plane roared, firing to life, and the agents stayed put.

And then they were gone, tearing through the air, back to the mansion.

“Did you get him?” Raven asked, once her hands stopped shaking. (Erik hoped it was just adrenaline, and sisterly fear.) “Is he okay? Where is he?”

“He’s alright,” he assured her, peeling the hated helmet from his head. “He’s going to rejoin the Brotherhood. He’s not hurt.”

Raven’s face half-fell, but she nodded grimly. “At least he’s alright.”

Alex leaned forward, eyeing Erik. “Are you alright? You look kind of shaken up, Prof.”

 _Damn._

“Fine,” Erik said curtly. He hesitated. They’d see the blood on his shirt anyway, once they looked. “I ran into some… complications. I had to use deadly force.”

“Oh,” Raven drew back a little, almost involuntary. Sean shifted, uncomfortable. Hank cut Erik a glance, but refocused on flying.

Only Alex didn’t move, and his eyes were too smart for his own damn good.

“Deadly force,” he said dryly. He _knew._

Erik shrugged. Alex knew, then, but the others didn’t have to. “It’s nothing,” he murmured. It wasn’t like they could identify Stryker’s body, or what killed him, now anyway. Erik had made sure of that.

The younger mutant leaned back, eyes hooded, watchful. “If you say so.”

They lapsed into uneasy silence, and the jet tore towards home. Erik closed his eyes.

“They’ll be looking for us now,” he warned. “They know what we look like, and what we can do. We have to be watchful now. You’re no longer children.”

“We know,” Sean said, surprising Erik. His face was soft and hard at the same time, and he didn’t look away. “We understand. We’re with you.”

Something warm stirred in Erik’s chest, and he remembered Magda, and Anya, and what _that_ had felt like, all those years ago. It felt _good._

But Erik only nodded, letting his face relax, and he leaned into the jet and waited to see Westchester again.

 _Charles,_ he thought warningly, even though they were probably out of range, now. _Be safe. Don’t cause a war._

Charles didn’t answer, but then, Erik didn’t expect him to. He simply waited, and prayed he had done the right thing.  



	3. justice (ash)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The price of peace.

_1985_

 __**0.**

 ****To the Mossad, Erik Lehnsherr was a file full of pictures. They had information, of course, name, age, birthplace, but most of his file was just pictures. Grainy security photos, an Argentine mug shot, dozens of pictures of dead men, ruthlessly, brutally slaughtered.

The most recent photo had been… _acquired_ from the Miami International Airport, dated 7 April 1962. Erik Lehnsherr was half-turned away, looking at the airport officials instead of the security cameras, and to a trained eye his tension was clearly visible.

He’d been hunting, that much was clear. Not a Mossad mission, but doubtless one of Israel’s many enemies—he’d been good for that.

And then, after April 7, 1962, Erik Lehnsherr had disappeared. There was no other word for it—he wasn’t photographed, heard from, or seen by Mossad’s many eyes again.

It was assumed that he’d been killed, that he’d met his match in his last target.

Mossad had waited a year, and then quietly closed his file. Those who had known him—very few—said a _Kaddish,_ and then life went on for Israel.

For all intents and purposes, Erik Lehnsherr was dead to Mossad.

This was why Nahum Admoni, aging Director of Mossad and one of the few who still remembered Lehnsherr and his deadly, terrifying efficiency, clutched the phone to his ear so tightly it creaked, and listened to a dead man talk.

“Do you remember me,” Erik Lehnsherr said, “Director Admoni?”

The Director swallowed. “Mr. Lehnsherr. According to our records, you are a dead man.”

On the other end of the line, Lehnsherr chuckled thinly. “Not yet,” he said.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Director Admoni gestured at his aide, mouthed “bring me Officer Erik Lehnsherr’s file,” and the aide hurried to obey.

“Does Israel remember me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Am I still an Israeli citizen, Director?”

Admoni blinked. “Yes,” he slowly. “We saw no reason to terminate your citizenship. We thought you were dead.”

“Does Israel remember the enemies I killed for her?”

The aide dropped Lehnsherr’s file—startlingly thin, really, for a man who had once been an agent—onto the Director’s desk, and he flipped it open, thumbing through the pictures.

Dozens of ex-Nazis, their faces crossed out, their bodies mangled, stared up at Admoni. Each and every dead man had been a threat to the fledgling Israel—each and every death had been celebrated.

“Yes,” Admoni said. “Israel remembers.”

The Director almost heard Lehnsherr relax.

“Excellent,” he said. “Meet me in Haifa in a week. I have important matters to discuss with you.:

“Wait,” Admoni ordered, leaning forward in his chair. “How did you—”

“A week, Director,” Lehnsherr said, and the phone clicked off.

“Director,” the aide began uncertainly.

“David, clear my schedule for next week.”

“Sir?”

With shaking fingers, Director Nahum Admoni set the phone down and closed Erik Lehnsherr’s file.

“Do it,” he ordered. “And send a team to Haifa. I have an old friend to see.”

  
 **1.**

 ****“Prof,” Alex said, bursting through the door, and Erik looked up from his current pile of paperwork.

( _Have to pass some of this onto Frost,_ he noted mentally.)

He arched an eyebrow at Alex.

“We have a problem.”

Erik sighed and rubbed his temples, trying to fight off a headache. “We always have a problem, it seems,” he said. “Please tell me the children haven’t found the coffee again. Or Ororo hasn’t electrocuted Jean. Or Scott hasn’t blown out the West Wing.”

“Not that kind of problem.” Alex’s face was still and stony. “Bigger.”

Erik felt weight coil in his gut. “Brotherhood-related problems?”

Alex nodded, his mouth set into a grim line.

“On the news?”

Another nod, and Alex crossed the room to flick on the television.

“ _The entire city of San Francisco is under lockdown,_ ” an announcer was saying, his voice tight with panic and excitement. “ _The citizens have, for reasons unknown, barricaded themselves in. No one is going in or out. All attempts to establish communication have so far been unsuccessful._

 _“Aerial surveillance reveals an eerily calm scene—the residents of San Fran going about their daily lives as though nothing is wrong, seemingly unaware of the fact that they’re barricaded in.”_

 _“This just in,”_ another reporter interrupted. _“The US government was contacted by the Brotherhood of Mutants—the very same group that was responsible for the Chicago Riots two years ago, and the Mutant Panic five years ago in Detroit. The Brotherhood is holding San Francisco hostage—”_

At once the TV exploded into shouting and pictures of San Francisco—road blocked, cars overturned, armed men sitting watchfully on top of heaps of debris—flashed across the screen.

Erik felt sick.

“ _The city of San Francisco is being held hostage by X,”_ a reporter screamed. “ _An act of war—”_

 _“The citizens are being mind-controlled,”_ another shouted. “ _Brainwashed by telepathy—”_

 _“Already the government is mobilizing troops—”_

 _“The war that’s been brewing since the ‘60s is finally underway—”_

Erik shut off the TV with a twitch of his powers, and dragged a hand through his graying hair. “ _Fuck,_ ” he snapped. “Fuck— _mein Gott_ —what is he _thinking?_ ”

Alex shook his head. “I don’t even know,” he said. “He’s never done anything this—”

“Blatantly suicidal—”

“— _bold_ before. Even the Riots weren’t that bad, considering. The public saw that as a sort of freak thing, not an act of war.”

Erik rubbed his temples, internally running through his list of foul language and derogatory names.

“This is bad,” he muttered. “Very, very bad.”

“No shit, Prof.”

Erik glared. “Call up Sean and Raven, Hank if you can reach him,” he said. “I’ll see if Emma can take over for a few days.”

“We going to San Fran?”

Erik set his shoulders. “ _You’re_ going to San Fran, right now. I’ll go to Washington and get the Department of Defense’s attention, call in some favors. We have to defuse this situation _now._ ”

“What can we do? They’ll crucify _all_ mutants for this.”

“Of course they will. Everything he’s done so far has mostly been assigned solely to him and the Brotherhood, but this, this is too large, too noticeable, to be blamed on just a handful of mutants. We’re all going to be blamed.”

Alex frowned. “You know the government did something to provoke him. He’s never done anything without being provoked first.”

“Yes, yes. The Department of Defense will tell me.” Erik swore again and rolled out from behind his desk.

“Are you sure?”

He gave Alex a flat, cold look. “Yes.”

Alex nodded. “I’ll get the others. Can Frost handle everyone, do you think?”

“Yes.”

Alex nodded again, and then darted out the door to call for Sean and Raven. He’d grown, Erik realized, with a sort of shock. He wasn’t an angry young man anymore, struggling to cope with his power; Alex was an adult, with control over himself and his temper. He was a teacher, a leader, and a father, now, and it showed.

Erik was strangely proud of him.

And then he turned his attention to the matter at hand and bit back another curse, feeling a headache chew at his brain and _tension_ tighten his shoulders.

 _Damn it, Charles, what the hell are you_ thinking _?_

Erik curled and uncurled his fingers, feeling the metal threading through his office. It pulsed, whispering, and he let the metal’s heartbeat sharpen his focus.

Holding the entire city of San Francisco hostage was the worst thing Charles had ever done. Even the Chicago Riots hadn’t been this bad—several people, both human and mutant, had died, but the city itself had been free and relatively unthreatened.

San Francisco had the threat of complete and total extermination.

Erik knew that, if Charles wanted to, if he was pushed enough, he could kill them all with a thought. That’s all it would take, a single thought, _die,_ and everyone within his chosen range would simply stop breathing.

Hopefully the government didn’t know that, because if they did, every mutant everywhere was fucked. Already mutantism was illegal in some countries—reports of men, women, and children hanged, burned, tortured filtered in weekly—and tensions rose in the streets. The Friends of Humanity were active again and Congress muttered of passing Anti-Mutant bills, and sometimes, Erik really, really, _really_ wanted to take his students and join Charles’s Brotherhood and just _end_ it all.

And they could.

Erik turned and looked out the window—still very small, unfortunately—onto the grounds. The children were out having Physical Education on the lawn, running (or flying) through obstacles, supervised by a watchful Sean.

The professor watched as Alex crossed the lawn in long, purposeful strides, pausing only to give his son Scott a quick hug, and murmured something in Sean’s ear.

Almost at once Sean moved, calling the children back and herding them in the direction of the mansion. There were about twenty students now, all of them mutants, most of them young and afraid of their own powers.

Some of them, though, were doing alright. Ororo Munroe, for example, loved her powers and used them at every opportunity. Jean Gray was slowly getting better, coming to terms with the fire in her blood. Scott, Alex’s son, followed both of them around like a puppy. With a few years and a little training, they’d be ready to enter the human world or stay and teach, if they wanted.

 _And if Charles incites a war, all will be lost,_ Erik realized, cold seeping into his fingers. If the government declared war on the mutants, Erik’s school would be threatened. He’d have to call in his allies, and he didn’t particularly want to reveal that ace up his sleeve, not yet.

But the rest of the mutants would be hunted, rounded up, and persecuted. They’d be experimented on—Erik and his children had found a few laboratories, over the years, he _knew_ the government would do it—and tortured.

Mutants would have to hide, and that was unacceptable.

Still frowning, Erik picked up his phone and dialed the number for the Secretary of Defense.

The phone rang once, twice, and then a man answered on the third ring. “Secretary McNamara,” the voice said, a snap in it.

“Whoever the hell you are, you better have a damn good reason for calling. In case you haven’t heard, there’s a mutant crisis in California and my boys are going to war—”

“Mr. Secretary,” Erik cut in smoothly, trying to cover up the spike in anxiety. The Secretary of Defense was already planning a war.

 _Fuck, Charles._

“Who is this?” a note of trepidation entered the Secretary’s voice—he knew to whom he was speaking.

“This is Mr. Lehnsherr.”

There was a heavy, pregnant pause—the sound was muffled, and the Secretary was shouting—and then the Secretary returned.

“Mr. Lehnsherr,” he said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Erik twitched. That’s the second time he’d been asked that question recently, and both times he’d gotten the impression that there was no pleasure involved. “You know why,” he said.

“You don’t want a war.”

“No. Storming San Francisco isn’t the way to solve this problem.”

“No,” the Secretary sneered. “It’s never the solution to you, right? You’d let your fellow _mutant_ stomp over American lives and ideals.”

“No,” Erik said, teeth gritted. He’d forgotten that Secretary McNamara was a bigot. “I’d prefer to solve this with as little bloodshed as possible.”

“Right,” the Secretary snapped. “Tell you what, _Lehnsherr,_ since you’re not the Secretary of Defense and _I_ am, you’re going to hang up the phone and let me do my damn job—”

“I’m coming to D.C.,” Erik interrupted, before the Secretary could hang up on him. “Do not doing anything before I get there. If you push a war, you won’t like the results. There will be loses on your side as well, Secretary.”

The Secretary muttered something and then huffed out a sigh. “Two hours, Lehnsherr,” he said. “And that’s only because Senator Kennedy respects you. Two hours, and then we’re going to war.”

“Very well.”

There was more talking, muffled, and Erik strained to hear it. Then, “Mr. Lehnsherr,” said a different voice, tinged with American Southern and false friendliness.

“Who is this?” Erik asked warily. His old instincts shuddered, a warning shivering through his fingers and making the metal-embedded room around him vibrate.

“My name is William Stryker,” said the man. “You knew my father, I think.”

“Yes.” _Oh, shit._ William Stryker—Erik knew his name. He was the elder Stryker’s pride and joy, a soldier, a scientist.

“When you arrive,” said Stryker, “I need to speak with you. See you in a few hours.”

And the phone clicked, signaling the end of the call.

Erik’s instincts throbbed. _Well,_ he thought, _I better call Emma, then._

  
 **2.**

 ****Charles Xavier leaned back in the Mayor’s chair and surveyed his handiwork. The whole city slept under his thumb, blind and oblivious and completely unaware of what he had done to them.

It hadn’t even been particularly hard, really. Just a few adjustments to their minds, a pull here, a tug there, and the citizens of San Fran had cheerfully barricaded themselves inside their own city, cutting themselves off from the government until Charles’s demands were met.

A frown deepened on his face.

Charles would hold the city hostage until Three Mile Island was destroyed. He had more than enough power, now—he was strong enough to hold the city asleep in their delusion, or make them fight, or make them die, one by one, until the atrocities of the Island were stopped.

And they were atrocities.

Mutants, _children,_ raped and tortured and pulled apart, their gifts reduced to strands of DNA under a microscope.

It was an abomination, and Charles would kill to stop it; the whole Brotherhood would. Hell, if Erik knew he’d kill to stop it too; it was too much like the death camps, like Shaw and his “experiments.”

Charles wished he could reach across the country and touch his old friend’s mind, explain himself, show Erik that he was doing what he was doing so a Holocaust could be prevented.

But he didn’t have Cerebro and he had too much pride. He’d explain himself later; Erik would come, if only to prevent an all-out war, of that he had no doubt.

Outside the door, Angel’s thoughts spiked, calling out to him.

 _X,_ she said.

 _Yes?_

 _All’s quiet. The National Reserve and most of the cops in the area are a few miles outside the perimeter and the Coast Guard’s in the bay, but no one’s close enough to fight with us yet. They don’t want to hurt the people, I think._

 _Good,_ Charles murmured. He felt out the consciousnesses not under his control and found them, the ordered minds of the military and the seething minds of the police.

He snorted. They thought they could win—surprise him, get the advantage somehow—and it was pathetic, really.

Humans, Charles had noticed, these last few decades, were terribly overconfident creatures.

 _Watch them,_ he said. _I doubt they’ll try anything yet, but just in case._

 _Of course._ Angel politely pulled her mind back and flew away, her wings buzzing over the city. None of the humans milling below even looked up; Charles had burned the concept of _mutant_ from their minds.

He steepled his fingers, looking at the city through his wide, airy window. The last twenty years had been hard. He’d escaped from the CIA with relative ease, of course, once Erik cleared the way, but after that, it had been twenty years of war.

Not that the government would admit it. There had been bombings, hate crimes, vicious, twisted experiments, all of it ignored by the government until Charles and his Brotherhood brought it to their attention.

He was a soldier now—bloody, ruthless, unafraid to kill for his own—and some part of him thought that Erik, the old Erik, before-Charles-and-the-beach-Erik, would approve.

The current Erik, however, might not, and Charles recognized that this was mostly his fault.

 _Azazel,_ he called, forcefully turning his thoughts away from the past.

At once, the Russian teleporter answered. _Boss?_

 _Gather all the mutants in the city and bring them to me. They won’t fight you; they know what you look like._   
_How will I find them?_

 _They’ll wear red. They’ll be the only ones wearing red, and they will wait on every street corner._

He felt Azazel nod mentally, and the teleporter disappeared. Charles reached out to all the mutants and made sure they did as he specified, and then he withdrew back into his own mind, monitoring the city from the outskirts.

The government would no doubt bring its forces en masse soon, and then Charles would demand the immediate liberation of all imprisoned on Three Mile Island. Maybe this little adventure could be resolved without much violence. Charles doubted it, but it was a possibility.

He closed his eyes. The wait was killing him, but it was only for a little while. Erik would be here soon, he was sure of it, and the mutant called X leaned back in his chair to wait.

  
 **3.**

 ****Erik landed in Washington, D.C. an hour and twenty-seven minutes after he called Secretary MCNamara. (In the years since Cuba, Hank’s planes had improved by leaps and bounds, and Erik had made a few ‘adjustments’ of his own—the result was that yes, Erik _was_ smarter than the American government and/or engineering firms.)

The feds swarmed around his plane immediately, shouting orders at each other and at him. He ignored them, as per usual, and stiffly made his way down the ramp.

At once the feds surrounded him, but they didn’t try and stop him so he kept going as they ushered him in the direction of a limousine.

Secretary McNamara was waiting for him, along with a dark-hard, fit man who could only be William Stryker. The resemblance to his father was uncanny, though he didn’t have the white hair or the large, wobbly belly.

 _Give it time,_ Erik thought, as a curl of instant dislike slid through his thoughts. He smiled at the man, and it was a hunter’s cold, toothy grin.

“Mr. Lehnsherr,” McNamara said coolly.

Erik nodded, not watching the Secretary at all. Stryker met his gaze, offered a smile that Erik hated at once—it reminded him of Shaw, of Menegle—and nodded.

“You are Mr. Stryker, I presume?”

“Yes.” The Southern twang was more noticeable in person, which was odd because Erik was relatively sure the original Stryker hadn’t been from the South. His instincts bristled, and the part of him that had once hunted Nazis gave a low growl.

McNamara was wearing metal on his person—cufflinks, a wristwatch, change in his pockets, a pen—but Stryker was not. Someone had told him, then, what Erik could do.

“Join us,” said Stryker jovially, gesturing at the limousine. “We have much to discuss.”

Erik eyed him warily but got into the limo anyway, folding his chair with a flick of his fingers and stowing it neatly underneath him. Once the other two men where situated, McNamara said something to the driver and the limo started to move.

“Where are you taking me?” Erik asked softly.

It was Stryker who answered. “Nowhere, really,” he said, just as softly. “We’ve got all we need right here.”

“I want to speak to your Congress.”

“Later, later.” Stryker waved a broad hand. “Congress isn’t meeting to discuss Anti-Mutant Bills for another two weeks; they want to see how this crisis plays out.” He smiled, showing Erik his teeth.

A shudder ripped through the mutant and he was seized by the violent, powerful urge to crush his windpipe or drive a coin through his brain.

If Stryker noticed the way the car rattled, he didn’t show it. “So,” he said. “Tell me, Mr. Lehnsherr. Just what can you do to end this crisis without bloodshed?”

“Talk to X,” Erik said immediately. “He must have a reason for attacking like he has. He doesn’t do anything without a purpose. He’s been provoked, somehow.”

“Are you saying that this fiasco is _our_ fault?” McNamara said, bristling. “ _We_ haven’t held any cities full of mutants hostage.”

Erik shrugged. “It isn’t completely your fault,” he conceded. “But you humans do share some of the blame. You provoke him, you know. You let the Friends of Humanity run unchecked, you let hate crimes go conveniently unreported, and each and every ‘mutant incident’ is blasted across every news channel and waved in the public’s face as an excuse for why an entire race should be punished for the mistakes of a few.”

McNamara opened his mouth furiously to retaliate, but Stryker cut him off.

“So this whole mess is just a misunderstanding?”

“An oversimplification,” Erik said. “But yes, in essence.”

“So what would you have us do? Let X and his Brotherhood run roughshod over the country, terrorizing good, innocent people?”

“Of course not,” Erik snapped. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying both sides are at fault here. X hasn’t done anything to lessen the public’s poor opinion of mutants, and the humans haven’t done very much to lessen his opinion of them.”

“You’re a Holocaust survivor, aren’t you, Mr. Lehnsherr?” The question caught Erik off guard; he reared back, instantly defensive, and the car shook for a moment with the force of his surprise. Stryker smiled thinly, and he looked so much like Shaw the urge to hit him was nearly overwhelming.

“Yes,” Erik said through gritted teeth. His numbers itched. “I am.”

Stryker nodded. “It seems to me,” he said, “that you would have more reason that X, who was raised in luxury, to hate. You’ve seen humanity’s darkest side, after all. How come you’re the one calling for peace and he’s the one trying to kill us all?”

Erik almost laughed. “Kill you all?” he repeated. “That’s ridiculous. Charles doesn’t want to kill all of you.”

“No?” Stryker arched an eyebrow, leaning forward. The limo sped up, weaving in and out of traffic.

“No,” Erik told him. “Killing off humans would accomplish nothing. Every human has the potential to create mutant life. Killing you is like killing our future children.”

“Interesting,” Stryker murmured, and Erik didn’t like the expression on his face, not at all. “So what does X want?”

“The same thing I want,” Erik said. “He wants mutants to be safe from humans.”

“And that’s what you want?”

“I want peace. There can be coexistence, I think, between our races. There doesn’t have to be violence and hatred.”

“That’s awfully optimistic for a Holocaust victim.”

“ _Survivor,”_ Erik corrected. “And you forget, Mr. Stryker, that there were those who freed us from the camps too.”

A silence fell in the car, heavy and uncomfortable. McNamara shifted and glanced at his watch and Stryker and Erik stared each other down like two wolves circling over a kill.

“What can you do,” Stryker said, switching topics suddenly, “to end this crisis? I hate to point it out, but you can’t even walk. What are you going to do against X?”

Erik smiled thinly, and reached out, grabbing the car and pulling up with a flick of wrist. The car leaped into the air and lurched forward, floating along ten feet above traffic. The driver and McNamara swore violently but Stryker watched, and hunger gleamed in his eyes.

It made Erik’s instincts scream.

“That’s very interesting,” Stryker murmured. “Very, very interesting.”

Erik showed him all of his teeth.

Below them car horns honked wildly and the limousine floated effortlessly above them all, held up by Erik’s easy power.

 _To think I had trouble, all those years ago,_ he thought, still focused on Stryker. He lowered the car gently and let the driver jerk back control; McNamara stared with wide, frightened eyes, and Erik grinned at him.

“As you can see,” he said, “I am not the helpless cripple you make me out to be. And X respects me; he will let me mediate between you.”

Stryker nodded. “You see,” he rumbled, “there’s the problem. We don’t _want_ you to mediate. We want you to capture X.”

Erik stared.

“He’s too powerful,” Stryker continued. “We can’t stop him; we throw armies and he’ll turn them to his side. We throw other mutants, ones who work for the government, and he’ll turn them to his side. San Francisco will be the first of many, if we’re not careful.”

Erik frowned. “What do you mean?”

“He has the entire city under his telepathic control,” Stryker said. “That’s leaps and bounds more powerful than he was ten years ago, and his power seems to only increase. And if he gets his hands on a telepathy-augmenting device, well. It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?” There was a glitter in his eyes that made Erik think, irrationally, of Hank. Clearly Stryker knew something.

 _Cerebro,_ Erik thought. _He’s talking about Cerebro._

“You want me to capture Charles Xavier,” he repeated, his mouth dry.

Stryker nodded. “I’ve been working with a young mutant by the name of Henry McCoy,” he said. “You know him, yes?”

Betrayal lanced through Erik’s chest. “Yes.” He hid his anger at Hank by looking out the window.  
“For several months now, we’ve been working on a sort of… cure, you could say, for telepathy.”

Erik’s blood ran cold. “You want me to capture one of my own kind,” he growled, “so you can force a _cure_ on him?”

“Yes.”

“No,” Erik said flatly. “No, it’s wrong, it will never work. I won’t.”

This time, it was McNamara who smiled, shark-like, and pulled a file from underneath his seat. He opened it, and on it were pictures of the mansion; the yard, the roof, tiny dots marking the children, Sean, Alex, and Raven.

Anger roared, and Erik saw red, for a moment. The limo shuddered violently and each and every bit of metal on McNamara vibrated. The Secretary swallowed, but didn’t put away the pictures.

“Now what’s this?” Stryker said. “It almost looks like a school, doesn’t it? A school for mutants, and on Charles Xavier’s family property, no less.”

“When,” Erik said lowly, “did you get those? I would have felt the plane—”

“Recently,” Stryker hummed. “You were in Israel, I believe, talking to your friend the Director of Mossad.”

Erik sat up even straighter, if possible.

“Oh yes,” said Stryker. “We know all about your little deal with him, and your Israeli citizenship. It makes _you_ nearly untouchable—if we kill you, Israel will retaliate, and the US can’t afford that right now. But these children here, they’re not Israeli citizens, are they?”

Erik glared, feeling deadly calm descend over him, ice his blood. His fingers itched to sink into the soft flesh of Stryker’s throat and just _pull._

“It would be a shame if the government had to raid this facility,” Stryker continued, almost conversationally. “Even if it’s a mutant-terrorist training facility.”

“ _Terrorist—_ ” Erik snarled, but caught himself.

Stryker and McNamara smiled.

 _Charles,_ Erik thought. _What do I do? I can’t let the children get hurt—I have a responsibility to them. I must protect them from Stryker, from the government._

“So,” said Stryker. “What’ll it be? Will you help us? Or will we have to take these children? I’m sure some of them have wonderful abilities—it’d be great to _test_ their limits, don’t you think?”

Fury rose in Erik’s throat, wild, howling, and his skin crawled. This man was—was _evil_ , was terrible and awful and cruel, and he was the winner, this time.

Erik felt a surge of anger for Hank, for working with this vile man, for creating a drug that would strip Charles of his mutation, his wonderful, brilliant ability.

He closed his eyes.

 _I have no choice._ “Very well,” he said, defeated. “I will help you capture Charles Xavier, on the condition that you don’t punish my race. Don’t let Congress pass an Anti-Mutant Bill. And stay the hell away from my children.”

Stryker grinned, and McNamara showed all of his teeth smugly.

“Deal,” the Secretary of Defense said, and offered his hand.

Gingerly, Erik took it, feeling anger and pain and _shame_ swell in his gut.

 _I’m sorry, Charles,_ he thought. _But what else can I do?_

  
 **4.**

 ****Israel was probably the most pro-mutant country in the world.

“Moses was the first mutant,” Mossad Director Nahum Admoni told Erik, in a café in Haifa. They had been surrounded by Mossad agents and drinking tea like nothing was wrong. “Or so our rabbi and religious scholars say. Being a mutant is not wrong; it is a gift from God, sent to better mankind.”

“So you treat your mutants well here?” Erik had asked. Moments ago he had revealed that he was a mutant—Magneto, the ever-elusive Professor who had, for the last twenty-some years, argued fearlessly for mutant rights—and that he wanted Israel’s political protection.

“Oh yes,” said the Director. “They are valued for obvious reasons. They make good soldiers, good intelligence officers, good scientists. We do not hunt them or harass them like America’s government does. Mutants are a great resource for Israel.”

Erik had nodded.

“Of course we will protect you,” Director Admoni said, without hesitation. “You served Israel well, when you were with Mossad, and now it will be our turn to serve you.”

Erik had blinked, warm and surprised. “It is men like you,” he had said, “that restore my faith in humanity.”

Nahum Admoni smiled. “Do not give up on us yet, my brother. Not all humans want to see you and yours destroyed.”

“I am grateful,” Erik murmured. “What do you want in return?”

The Director of Mossad clapped him on the shoulders. “My old comrade,” he had said, “I want nothing at all.”

They had talked for many hours, negotiating peace and Erik’s protection, and then, as Erik wheeled himself back out into Haifa he had turned back once to see Nahum Admoni, and a _shalom_ was on his lips, and his hand was raised like a benediction.

Erik dearly wished for that sort of acceptance now.

The flight to San Francisco took four hours. All the while Erik had let been steeped in thought, his heart twisting, and wound to the edge because William Stryker and a team of black-suited men settled in the back of his plane.

“Consider it a precaution,” Stryker had said, with a smile. “And this way, we can just take X off your hands.”

The helmet was heavy on Erik’s head. He hated wearing it—it felt like _Shaw_ —but the government had insisted, so Charles didn’t pull their plan from his mind, didn’t take control over him and kill them all.

 _So Cuba won’t happen,_ McNamara had said, and Erik hated him. Since D.C., he had been alone for a grand total of seven minutes, which he used to place a frantic call to Director Admoni in Israel and another to Alex in San Fran.

“I might need your help,” he had said to the Director, and explained the situation. Admoni vowed to send five Mossad agents to Westchester at once, to protect the school.

Erik hoped Emma didn’t eat them. She hadn’t been happy, really, to be called out of her retreat, but she came anyway, and he was grateful. Telepaths were useful to have around. At least he knew the children would be well-behaved in his absence.

The rest of the team, Stryker included, were wearing helmets too, for the same reasons. Charles wouldn’t know they were coming.

To Alex, he had ordered watchfulness, and to protect the innocent should war erupt. He didn’t tell him about Stryker’s plan—he couldn’t.

He flew over San Fran, slicing above the Bay. The radio crackled, buzzed to life.

“Who is this?” Azazel growled, his voice heavy and unmistakable. At the sound of a Russian, half the special ops team stiffened— _great,_ Erik thought, _now I have to explain that no, Charles is_ not _in league with communists_ —and Stryker hummed a gentle warning.

“Azazel,” Erik said. “It’s me, Lehnsherr.”

There was a pause. “Are you alone?”

Erik felt heavy, in his chest, his throat. “Yes.”

Another pause, and then Azazel came back. “Why are you here?”

“To negotiate a peaceful resolution.”

“And you are wearing your helmet?”

“Yes.”

Azazel was gone for nearly two minutes, and then the radio clicked back on. “Land on the bridge,” he ordered. “We’ll escort you to X.”

Erik made sure the radio was off before turning to Stryker and his men. “You’ll have to hide,” he ordered. “Immediately. Behind the panels; there’s room for all of you.”

“Do it,” Stryker ordered, and the men scrambled to obey. Within thirty seconds the cabin was empty; it looked as if Erik was alone. He passed over the Golden Gate Bridge and reach out, trailing his power across it, stripping wires and supports and beams back, peeling them away until the bridge was little more than a runway.

 _I’ll have to fix that,_ he thought, guiding the plane down for descent. No sooner had he landed than Azazel flashed in, bringing in heat and the smell of cinnamon. The teleporter looked around the cabin and stared at Erik, his tail twitching. The plane slid to a halt and Erik stared back, sharp-eyed, fearless.

 _I have nothing to hide,_ he told himself. _Nothing to hide._

“Did the government send you?”

“Yes,” Erik said truthfully. “They would like to avoid the bloodshed, I think.”

Azazel made a derogatory sound but didn’t argue. “Come,” he ordered, and waited for Erik to wheel towards him. “Grab your chair tightly.”

Erik did, and Azazel put a hand on his shoulder. He squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for it, and then, with a lurch, he was in an office and sunlight was streaming through a window, and Charles Xavier was looking at him with a gentle smile curving on his face.

“Erik,” Charles said warmly. “Hello, old friend.”

Erik swallowed, and kept his face very still. He was aware that he was still wearing his glasses—it wasn’t as easy to read the plane’s readouts, these days—and that bits of silver hair shone through the helmet. He felt old, suddenly, very old, and it was with the driest of humor that he smiled thinly and reminded himself that hey, at least he wasn’t all gray like Charles was.

“Charles,” he said quietly. “Hello. I see you’re well.”

The telepath dipped his head. “Well enough, I suppose. Azazel tells me that the government drew you into this?”

Erik nodded.

Charles bared his teeth, and twenty years ago it might have been a grin. “You mustn’t let them push around, Erik.”

“I would have come anyway,” he said.

“Oh?” Charles looked away, out the wide, wide— _very wide,_ Erik noted, annoyed. _Clearly someone’s not worried about assassinations_ —window. “Is that why your students are here?”

“Are they alright? I haven’t talked to them in a few hours.”

“Oh, they’re fine.” Charles waved a dismissive hand. “Worried about you, of course. They think the government is holding you hostage.”

“No,” Erik said. “The government doesn’t know they exist. I’d prefer to keep it that way. They are here to back me up, and to protect the innocent in case you or the government starts a war.”

“Ah,” said Charles. “That makes sense. Do you really think I’d start a war for no reason, old friend?”

“No,” Erik said slowly. “No, I do not. What’s your reason for this mess, Charles?”

“Three Mile Island.”

Erik blinked. The name was unfamiliar.

“It’s a nuclear power plant,” Charles explained, and anger tightened the lines—Jesus, lines, they were getting old—around his mouth. “Under the control of William Stryker, a scientist.”

Erik’s stomach twisted.

“They do experiments there, on our kind. They pull mutants apart looking for _cures_ or reasons why we’re mutants, and they combine and recombine and strip down DNA. Stryker’s own _son_ is one of the experiments—Jason, is his name—and Stryker is using him to drive others insane, to control, and to see if a mutant’s DNA can be purified, can be turned _human_ again.”

Erik felt sick. “His own son?” He thought of his daughter, of Anya, who might have been _grown_ now, beautiful and sweet (and _human_ ), and the thought of torturing her because she hadn’t been like him made his throat close.

Charles seemed to understand. “Three Mile Island must be shut down,” Charles said. “Unfortunately, I don’t have the manpower to do so.”

“So you decided to capture the city of San Francisco?”

Charles gave him another too-sharp smile, all jagged edges. “Yes.”

“So,” Erik said. “You will free San Francisco if Three Mile Island is liquidated?”

“Oh, yes. I have absolutely no interest in this place otherwise.”

Erik felt out the room, probing for metal. There were pens all over the place, a few coins shoved here and there, buttons on the edges of Charles’s immaculate suit. He had enough to work with.

Guilt and anger at Stryker squirmed in his chest. “And where is this Three Mile Island?”

“Pennsylvania,” said Charles. “It’s a nuclear power plant, as I’ve said. The facility’s energy comes from the plant—that’s how we found it.”

Erik frowned. “Near Harrisburg?”

“Yes.”

He filed the information away and reached for a coin not too far away, hidden in the cracks, gently, slowly tugging it to him. “Charles,” he said, and Charles looked at him with his brilliant blue eyes. “Do you ever wonder what would’ve happened if you had stayed with me, on the beach?”

Charles looked away, and his jaw worked. “Sometimes,” he admitted. “Sometimes I—”

“I know what you mean. You’d be a better teacher than I am, I think.”

“How is the school?” Charles asked, and there wasn’t any of Stryker’s malice in his face, only curiosity.

Erik smiled a bit. “Good,” he said. “Alex has shaped up to be quite the teacher—he’s a father now, if you haven’t heard—and the children love Raven. When I get back I have to fill out the paperwork to get another year’s worth of supplies, actually.”

Charles’s face twitched into what might be a frown. “You only get supplies on a yearly basis?”

“Of course,” Erik said. “I’m not going to run the damn thing forever, you know. One day, I’m going to shut it down.”

“Why? It’s a safe place for our kind!”

“We shouldn’t need it,” Erik said. “We shouldn’t have to hide ourselves away. And one day we won’t have to; mutant children will be able to go to school with humans, and then we won’t need the school anymore.”

Charles drew back a bit. “So you run the school—”

“To shut it down, one day,” Erik finished. The coin was almost behind Charles now, and it rose steadily.

His chest hurt, a deep sort of ache that would never go away again.

Charles’s eyes were soft. “I’ve seen men’s minds,” he said gently. “I’ve seen what they think of us. And I hate to break it to you, my old friend, but your dream will never come to pass.”

Erik smiled lopsidedly and thought of the men who saved him from the camps, of his beautiful, long-dead daughter, of Director Nahum Admoni and Israel. “No?”

He turned the coin so it was facing the back of Charles’s head and the edge was pointing away. He wasn’t trying to kill Charles, just knock him out, and guilt rose like bile in his throat.

“No,” said Charles, and his eyes were incredibly, painfully blue.

Erik held his eyes, and with a twitch of his fingers, brought the coin smashing into the back of Charles’s head.   
****

****

**5.**

Charles fell over without a sound, and shame burned the back of Erik’s eyelids. With a heavy hand he grabbed hold of his old friend’s buttons, lifting him, and turned.

 _Now the hard part,_ he thought. He had an entire city to get through with an unconscious telepath floating behind him.

There was a knock on the door and Azazel stuck his head in, and before he could move, Erik hurled the coin again, striking the red mutant in the temple and dropping him like a brick.

“At least my aim is still good,” he told the unconscious Charles bitterly. “Otherwise that would have been messy.”

Erik got outside with relative ease—there was no one else in the building—and blinked in the sun, keeping one hand outstretched and his mind sharp for any weapons he could use.

There were humans outside, but they were moving as if they were zombies, shuffling blindly to and fro, ignoring Erik and his floating companion completely.

“I hope,” he told Charles, “that whatever you did to them wears off, otherwise the government is going to be very, very unhappy with you.”

He began to move, using his power to nudge the wheelchair along faster than he could roll it normally, and Charles’s still body raced behind him like a sort of floppy, human-shaped cape.

For several city blocks, no one interrupted him. It was as if he was invisible, for all the attention the residents of San Francisco paid him, and Erik was grateful.

It made his job much easier.

And then he saw people moving like they were actually alive—people wearing red shirts, and one of them was literally on fire, so, mutants—and they saw him, and they froze when they saw Charles.

 _Well,_ Erik thought, _shit._

“Hey!” one of them shouted, coming closer. “Who are you? What are you doing?”

Erik didn’t stop to explain himself—he seized a parking meter and wrapped it around the mutant’s— _red shirts, Charles,_ really?—chest, pining him in place.

The other mutants shouted, confused. These clearly weren’t trained, like Charles’s Brotherhood or his children, and he systematically took them out one by one, either knocking them unconscious or tangling them in various bits of metal.

Only a few tried to attack him, and with cars he deflected their attacks and pinned them neatly under a few carefully constructed tons of metal.

The humans milling everywhere didn’t even bat an eyelash.

He got nearly all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge before Angel showed up, screaming, acid fire trailing her lips. Globules of the stuff splattered the ground, smoking, and singed Erik’s legs and hands. He winced and glared up at her. She had grown up too, he realized with a jolt, like all of his children; she was a middle-aged fighter now, not a confused, angry young woman.

And she was trying her damndest to kill him.

Wonderful.

Growling, Erik snatched up cars and trashcans and telephone poles, launching them one after another at her.

Angel dodged them all, her wings buzzing. She had improved, then.

“Traitor!” she screamed. “You fucking _traitor,_ he loved you!”

“I’m sorry!” Erik bellowed, still hurling whatever he could at her. “It’s the only way to keep the children safe.”

Angel howled, wordless with fury, and dove at him.

Erik smacked her out of the air with a car and she fell, twitched, and didn’t rise again. As he passed he saw her breathing, her face and arms cut up but otherwise unhurt, and he breathed a sigh of relief and sped on.

He didn’t know where Riptide was lurking, but it couldn’t be far.

He slid onto the Golden Gate Bridge, tugging Charles behind him, and flicked the ramp down, shooting up into the plane.  
Stryker was waiting for him, sitting in the copilot’s seat smugly. “I see your mission was a success.”

Erik snarled at him, shaking with anger—at the smirking bastard, and mostly at himself—and dropped Charles gently into a vacant seat.

The plane fired to life and then Erik saw Riptide, a small blur on a rock, a massive tornado hurtling through the air, and Angel racing on foot towards the bridge.

Erik closed his eyes and lifted the plane, feeling it rumble, and he reached down and grabbed the bridge, feeling it hum and throb inside his blood, and he _ripped_ —

With the greatest effort it had ever cost him, the bridge came screaming upwards, catching the brunt of Riptide’s tornado and forcing Angel to dive to the side, giving Erik the precious few seconds he needed—

He shattered the sound barrier with a vengeance, and the last thing he saw of San Francisco was the Golden Gate Bridge falling into the Bay.

  
 **6.**

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Alex snapped, dragging a hand through his blonde hair. “What the _hell,_ Professor!”

Erik let him rant impassively, sitting expressionless in his chair.

Raven paced in wounded circles, flickering from shape to shape. She hadn’t done that in years, and it cut a ragged hole in Erik’s chest to see her doing it now.

“You turned him into the government?” she asked, disbelieving and angry. “To a man who’s going to take his power away?”

Logically, Erik knows that part of Raven’s problem is that it’s _Hank_ who’s helping Stryker—Hank, who she loved, and who she hasn’t seen in nearly two decades—but he couldn’t deal with it right now. He didn’t know _how_ to deal with the children’s pain—he could barely manage his own, and he wasn’t a fucking telepath.

He was just a man. A tired, stunned, best-friend-betraying man, and he wasn’t supposed to _do_ this—he wasn’t a teacher, a confidant, a goddamn double agent.

(In Germany, before the war, he had wanted to be an architect.)

“Prof,” Sean said, shifting nervously. Out of the three—well, he can hardly call them children anymore, they’re all middle-aged adults, and they were never that much younger than him anyway—Sean is the only one still sitting, and Sean is the only one who will leave the mansion.

Out of all of them, Sean has grown the most. He wasn’t a crazy high kid anymore. He was a teacher, and he loved it, and he and Emma were putting their heads together to create a sister school for the Academy.

It will hurt to see him go.

“Prof,” Sean said again, trying, maybe, to get his words underneath him. “That was—that was _wrong._ ”

“Of course it was,” Erik snapped. “I betrayed him. He let me in and I betrayed him.”

“ _Why_?” Raven’s confusion was giving way to anger; Erik could see it boiling and jumping underneath her skin.

“Stryker threatened you,” he snarled. The plane shook. Two miles away San Francisco was waking up—cries and sirens and panic tore into the air. “He showed me pictures of the school and threatened to take away the children.”

“He can’t—”

“If he says we’re training them to join Char— _X_ , he can.” Erik looked away, a muscle in his jaw twitching. The helmet lay abandoned ten feet away, where he had thrown it hard enough to dent the top. The edges of the plane were warped, twisted by his fury.

Raven continued to pace and Alex stopped, letting it sink in, and Sean understood right off the bat.

“They’d take Scott,” Alex said unsteadily. “My _son_.”

“Prof,” Sean murmured. “It’s okay. You did what you had to do, right? And Ch—X, he’ll be fine. Stryker’s not going to kill him, right? He’s just going to remove his powers?”

Raven made a shattered, keening sound. “I’m going after him,” she said. “I don’t care if he’s responsible for this fucking mess, he’s my _brother,_ he doesn’t deserve—”

“No one does,” Erik interrupted, looking her in the eye again. “No one does, Raven.”

“Then why did you turn him in!”

“To protect everyone.” Alex looked Erik straight on, his eyes sharp and serious. “Right? To protect everyone. You care about them.”

“Too much, probably,” Erik muttered, but Alex and Sean heard it and almost smiled.

“I’m going after Charles,” Raven said. “And you can’t stop me. He’s my brother, and I love him, even after all he’s done.”

“Mystique,” Erik said. “We’re going after him. Together. I won’t leave him.”

“But you turned him in,” she snapped, still so angry she shook and flickered with it. The two men turned to look at him, confused now.

“But,” Alex began, “why would you go to all the trouble of turning him in if you were going to just bust him out?”

 _Again,_ his eyes said. Erik had forgotten that Alex, and Alex alone, knew just what he had done twenty years ago in Langley.

“I needed to buy time,” Erik said. “For reinforcements to get here.”

“Reinforcements?” Sean asked, sitting a little straighter.

Erik smiled coldly and took his glasses off. “The Israelis,” he said.

Alex arched both of his eyebrows. “ _That’s_ why you went to Israel?”

The professor nodded. “The Mossad and I go far back,” he explained, “to before the Cuban Missile Crisis. I worked for them for many years, and the current Director has agreed to offer me the protection of an Israeli citizen. Before I came here I called him and asked him to take measures to protect the school. He’s had enough time. It’s safe to go after Stryker.”

“Do you know where he is?” Raven asked anxiously, fixing Erik with her bright eyes. “Because so help me, Magneto, if you get Charles killed, I will rip you apart.”

She wasn’t lying, and Erik felt a sort of pride stir in the ashes of his guilt and anger.

“Three Mile Island,” he said. “Near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.”

“Let’s go,” Raven said immediately. “We can get there in what, three hours? Four hours?”

“Four,” Alex muttered, bounding over the controls. “Prof, do you mind if we take your plane and leave the other one here?”  
Erik shook his head. “It’s not like anyone can fly it,” he pointed out.

“Good. Yours is faster anyway.”

Reaching out, Erik kick-started the engine and the plane sang to life. Alex flopped down in the copilot’s chair—Erik saw Stryker, a sickly grin on his face—and he grabbed the controls, getting a good start and tearing off into the sky.

The FAA bellowed orders at him over the radio, telling him to get down or they’d shoot, and Erik bared his teeth and ignored them.

Sean stayed sitting, looking slightly green as Erik raced at the edges of the sound barrier, unwilling to break it this time in case he got there too early, before the Israelis could protect his school politically or physically.

 _We’re coming,_ he thought. Half-assed and without a real plan other than destroy, but they were coming, and fast.

“What are we going to do, Prof?” Alex asked.

Raven pulled her lips back. “Get him out,” she said.

Alex rolled his eyes. “We can’t just blast our way in there. We’ve got to have a plan. Are there other mutants there, for instance?”

“It’s a research facility, so yes,” Erik said. “And I think there are some mutants there who work for the government.”

“So,” Raven summarized, “Plan A: put everyone who’s not in a jumpsuit or strapped down to a table through a wall.”

“Excellent,” Sean said.

Erik shook his head. “Not at first. We have to sneak in, or they could kill Charles before we get to him.”

“We can do stealth. So, sneak in, get Charles, _then_ put people through walls.”

“Yes.”

Raven smiled. “Great. So we’ve got a plan.”

Erik gave her a tight, controlled grin. “Yes,” he said, and let the anger seep up, swallow the guilt and grief and drown them. His plane screamed though the air, leaving San Francisco and its shattered bridge behind him. Israel would take care of his mansion, and if they failed, Emma was there, and the government couldn’t really beat Emma Frost.

 _Charles,_ he thought. _I’m sorry. We’re coming._

  
 **7.**

Three Mile Island didn’t look like a mutant testing facility, but then, they rarely did.

If it wasn’t for the metal of cages and surgical tools rattling at the edge of Erik’s mind, he would never guess what the place actually was; it looked like a normal nuclear power plant.

But he could feel the knives and the bars, and it was enough to set his teeth on edge. Beside him, Raven was a coil of frantic energy, her fingers curling and uncurling as she watched men patrol the perimeter.

She wanted to destroy them, for taking Charles, for hurting mutants. It had taken her years to get comfortable in her own skin and now there was someone with a _cure,_ telling her that she wasn’t pretty enough as she was; she wasn’t good enough, _normal_ enough, and his Raven, this post-Cuban creature, would not stand for that.

Erik smiled.

Alex crouched still and silent beside him, heat rippling from his skin. He was angry too, Erik could feel it; Stryker had threatened his son, and if there was one thing you didn’t do, it was threaten a parent’s child.

Sean flew in wide, nearly-silent loops above them, scanning the base from the sky. Erik saw him signal _all clear,_ and he nodded to the other two.

“Go,” he hissed, and they bounded from his side like bullets shot from a gun.

Raven pounded the first guard in a whirl of blue limbs, pulverizing his face with a few well-aimed kicks and bouncing on to the next one. Alex preferred his fists, and he dealt crushing blows; within a few seconds six guards—and what power plant had guards, really? That should’ve been their first tip-off—lay unconscious on the ground.

Erik rolled forward, feeling out the compound, and he slid the door open quietly. “Hide them,” he ordered, gesturing at the bodies. Alex hurried to obey, dragging the guards into some nearby shrubbery and leaving them there, but not before grabbing a uniform and tugging it on over his battlesuit.

Raven flickered, taking on one of the guards’ shapes, and together she and Alex strode forward to push Erik’s wheelchair.

At once, Erik let himself go still and lax, mouth opening slightly as if he had been drugged. Their footsteps were unnaturally loud in the hallway, it seemed, but whenever another guard or scientist came past, they just nodded and murmured a hello to Alex and Raven.

 _Trojan horse,_ Erik thought. _No one suspects the cripple._

Along the way he counted cells by feeling, and from Raven’s tense, angry grip near his shoulder, he knew that conditions for the mutants trapped inside weren’t very good.

 _We’ll get you out,_ he thought.

The three turned and twisted through the hallways, following a map Alex liberated from one of the guards. As they wound their way deeper into Three Mile Island, the cells began to thin out—only the dangerous ones were kept here, probably, and Erik suddenly got an idea.

“Stop,” he hissed at Alex and Raven, and they did.

He opened his eyes and blinked. The light was greenish and guttering, like an old candle, and the cells were only once about every two hundred feet. Erik peered into one and received a low, dangerous snarl in return.

“The fuck are you?”

Erik blinked. He knew that voice, from a long time ago…

“Logan?”

The growling stopped. “How do you know my name?” A man stepped from the shadows of his cell, sideburns and all, his eyes glowing furiously. His whole body stank of metal, of adamantium, and Erik shivered—someone had infused this man’s skeleton with it.

“You don’t remember me?”

“Should I?” There was aggression in Logan’s voice, the undercut of hideous violence, but mostly there was only confusion, and a little fear.

“My name is Erik Lehnsherr,” Erik said. “Tell me, Logan, would you like to get out of her?”

“Fuck yes.”

“Will you fight with me?”

“Fuck. Yes.”

“Alright then.” With a thought Erik peeled back the bars, leaving a Logan-sized hole in the cell. The mutant stepped out, growling softly, and shook himself. The metal in his bones rattled and clinked softly on the floor.

“This is Mystique,” Erik said, nodding at Raven. “And this is Havok. You may call me Magneto or Professor, it’s your choice.”

“Jesus,” Logan snorted, stretching. “Who the fuck told you those names were cool, huh? They sound like fucking dog names.”

Erik arched an eyebrow. “Oh? And what do you call yourself, hmm? Just Logan?”

The man was silent for a moment, and his hand went to a pair of dog tags hung around his neck. “Wolverine,” he said. “Call me Wolverine.”

Erik nodded. “Very well, Wolverine. Can I trust you to free the prisoners?”

“Can I kill the guards?”

“If you can do it quietly,” Erik said with a shrug.

Wolverine smiled, and it was more animalistic than anything he’d ever seen. “Then sure, I’ll free whoever you want. Where you wanna meet?”

“Here,” Erik said decisively. “In twenty minutes. Do you know where the labs are?”

“Down the hall, third right,” said Wolverine. “Can’t miss ‘em.”

Erik smiled. “Thank you,” he said. “We’ll see you momentarily.” He flopped back down in his chair, playing drugged, and let his two former students continue their masquerade.

“Was that smart, Prof?” Alex murmured.

Erik almost shrugged. “We’ll see,” he breathed back, and then he was turned right, and a pair of double doors clicked open at his mental nudge.

And then there was screaming.

Someone was _howling,_ high and hard, wailing in grief and pain, and Erik bolted upright because he _knew_ —

“Charles!” he roared, and without even pausing to think he hurled knives and scalpels at the legion of white-coated men, splattering blood and confused fear.

Alex and Raven _moved_ —red sunlight splintered from Alex’s fingertips and obliterated the nearest five _scientists_ , and the next five fell under a furious onslaught of blue limbs and flashing yellow eyes.

Erik roared again, his words stolen from him in sheer, boiling _rage_ , and he flipped over tables and tools and chairs, sharpening them, turning them into furious, lethal weapons that he flung at every face he could see.

Men fell under sunlight and feet and sharpened metal, screaming, crying out in pain, but no one was screaming louder than Charles Xavier, and a sudden, crushing guilt nearly doubled Erik over.

Charles was strapped to a table and he was screaming, arching off the metal surface as much as he could. An IV line full of something pale blue and glowing snaked into his arm and Erik could see that whatever it was—Stryker’s _cure_ —was hurting him, and badly.

Blood oozed from his hands where his nails had dug through and his lips were chewed raw and bloody, his eyes rolling up into his head as he screamed and screamed.

Guilt made Erik almost physically sick, and he rushed forward, rolling through the mass of dead scientists to rip the IV line from Charles’s white, shaking arm.

The convulsions stopped almost immediately and Charles stilled, shaking, on the table.

His eyes were closed and blood matted his hair— _from where I hit him,_ Erik realized, and felt sick—and his breath came in great heaving gasps.

“Charles—” Erik whispered, and choked on it. “Charles, Charles—”

“Professor Lehnsherr,” said Hank McCoy, and he stepped from the shadows.

Erik _snarled_ at him, reaching for something sharp, and Hank raised his huge paws.

“Don’t,” he said, and he sounded fucking _broken_ but Erik didn’t care, Hank had made _this_ possible—

“Why the hell not?” Raven spat, and pain and fury laced her voice. Hank flinched. “Look at what you did to my _brother,_ McCoy, and tell me why I shouldn’t kill you.”

“I didn’t know,” Hank whispered, and his furry face was twisted in pain. “I swear, I thought it would just limit his mutation, not _hurt_ him like that, I didn’t know— But it’s not too late. Take him somewhere safe, so he can—recover, a little, I guess. He hasn’t had enough to kill him. The damage might not be permanent. He hasn’t had the full course. I’ve got the rest, Stryker will never have this cure again, I _promise._ ”

Erik bared his teeth. “Go,” he ordered Hank. “Leave Stryker. Never work for him again. Find something to do that _helps_ your own kind, not does _this_ to them, or so help me—”

His eyes were flat and lifeless, and Hank bowed his head. “Yes,” he said. “I understand. I’ll kill myself first, before I let this happen again.” He turned to go, his shoulders huge and shaking, his blue fur spiked in agitation. “I should’ve stayed at the mansion,” he said.

“Yes,” Erik said. “You should have.”

"I'll send some medicine that might help." And then Hank was gone, and Erik turned his attention back to Charles. He was cold, and shaking, and covered with a fine sheen of sweat. His eyes rolled madly under their lids and his heartbeat was thready, erratic.

“We have to go,” Erik said, mostly to himself, but Alex and Raven heard him. Gently, Erik undid the straps holding Charles Xavier down and lifted him up, cradling him gently in his lap.

Charles shivered, but didn’t wake, and Erik wondered just how bad the damage was. Could he still use his power? Was it too late?

 _Yes,_ Erik thought, and there was a sinking feeling in his gut. _Yes, it was._

The trio moved silently back towards Wolverine. Alex couldn’t look at Charles and Raven couldn’t seem to look away, her yellow eyes brimming over with sadness.

The rest of the base was a wreck of busted-open cells and bodies. Some of the captive mutants—children, mostly, and Erik’s illness increased—stared with wide, blank eyes at the trio and their unconscious companion. Some of the older ones were herding the little ones together, and others still were letting their powers crash though their bodies, smashing guards and cells and walls.

Erik heard Wolverine howling, roaring, drunk on bloodlust, and he cradled Charles closer and cleared his throat.

“I can take fourteen of you in the plane with me,” he said. “The rest will have to go in helicopters or the guards’ cars. Divide yourselves into groups of four—every child with an adult, please—and we’ll take you home.”

The prisoners of Three Mile Island didn’t cheer. They quietly arranged themselves into groups, and Wolverine came back with a friend, bloodstained and snarling.

“Wolverine,” Erik said. “Come with me, please. I have to make sure the metal in your bones won’t kill you.”

Logan started—he didn’t expect that—and nodded, more out of surprise than anything.

Erik closed his eyes briefly, alternatively comforted and repulsed by Charles’s warm, shaking weight.

He knew, instinctively, that Charles’s telepathy was damaged, perhaps beyond repair. No one screamed like that unless they were in great, terrible pain, unless something vital was being ripped from them.

He nudged his chair forward and the mutants parted like a sea, following grimly behind him. On one side, Raven and Alex walked, leaning on each other for support. On the other, Wolverine and his friend, who was talking rapidly, prowled like human tigers, hungry for blood.

The ragged group of mutants burst into the sunlight and Erik flinched, closed his eyes, reaching for Charles’s mind before he could stop himself.

… _Erik…?_

He jumped, blinking down at the unconscious, wounded telepath. Blood was drying on his lips, caking them, and another wave of guilt tore up the professor’s insides, leaving them raw and hollowed out.

 _Charles?_

He didn’t get a response in words, only tattered, burning fragments. Something was wrong—Charles was fuzzy, disconnected, but he could still reach out with his mind, still use his powers, and relief nearly floored Erik.

 _Charles,_ he said, unsure if his old friend could even hear him. _Charles, if you can hear me, don’t be afraid. I’m going to fix this, I promise._

Charles didn’t answer, only shook in Erik’s arms as the groups divided to find cars or a helicopter, but Erik thought that, for a moment, Charles had smiled.

 _It’ll be okay,_ he thought, and prayed.

  



	4. love (magneto)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The eve of war, again.

part three: love (magneto)

  
 _january 2002_

 **0.**

New York was nearly as cold as Poland, sometimes. The winters set in harsh and sudden, with icy teeth and snowy claws, snapping trees, bending roofs, driving everyone to the safety and warmth of their homes.

Winter in upstate New York was a time of peace, because it was too cold for war. It was a time of frost, and regrets clinging in ice crystals, and old, tired men sitting deep in their chairs, contemplating their aches and pains.

William Stryker was not one of those old men.

He stared through the swirling white, eyes narrowed, trying to pick out shapes he knew from memory. Off to his left, a satellite dish loomed through the snowstorm, gray and immovable. In front of him lay thick woods, and through the gaps in the trees he can see the blur of a large, ornate building. It was a school, and everyone was inside today, bundled up in frontof fires or curled together in their dorms.

The teachers, ever vigilant, would be patrolling the hallways, chatting quietly with each other and keeping the peace; a school full of mutant children was volatile, at times. The headmaster would be in his study, playing chess with his friend Nahum Admoni via telephone or reading, or grading papers or filling out paperwork, anything but staring out into the snow.

William Stryker knew this—he knew Erik Lehnsherr, the mutant called Magneto, better than he knew his own son, or his granddaughter.

He waited in the snow, watching, and all around him there were men dressed in seamless white suits, blending and blurring with the blizzard. They had weapons made of plastic, tranquilizers, flash grenades, a whole arsenal to take down the school.

And, best of all, they had Presidential approval, so long as no one died.

Stryker let a smile curve on his numb, shaking lips, and he raised a single gloved fist. Behind him guns clicked and the men shifted in the heavy snow, and Stryker tasted eagerness on his tongue.

“Go,” he said.

  
 **1.**

When Erik awoke, it was in flashes, in stop-gaps of blinding light and bubbling, churning rage. His hands hurt. His mouth tasted like saltwater and cotton balls— _drugs—_ and he couldn’t feel his legs, but that wasn’t strange because he never could, really, right?

Anger swelled and rose, snarling in his chest, greater and more terrible than it had been for _years,_ and he was dimly aware of buildings and cars writhing away from him, flattened, reduced to nothing.

Someone was screaming—howling, wailing—and then they were gone.

He fought for consciousness, rising against the light, and he wasn’t a man, not anymore—he was a column of fire, a pillar of ash, all teeth and claws and sharp, jagged metal. He dug his hands into the sheets of steel around him and tore it up, mountains springing from his fingertips, lashing, squirming, and there were more screams, sharp and aborted, and the warm, coppery stink of blood.

And then, there was silence.

Erik came back to himself in stages, chest heaving, the metal around him bristling like a living thing, growling, purring.  
He was alone, and when he opened his eyes to the light he saw that he was in the back of a truck of some kind, and the truck was no longer moving.

It was destroyed. Metal formed jagged, oozing spikes and dead men lay still, shredded by his fury.

He shook. He hadn’t been this angry since, since Three Mile Island, and he didn’t know _why_ —

Memory flickered through his brain, swirls of color and emotion but he didn’t know where they were from, only that he was alone in the back of a truck and horribly, terribly angry.

 _The children,_ he thought, and he threw himself into every scrap of metal he could feel, and in his ten mile radius he didn’t recognize _anything_ —he wasn’t near the mansion, and he wasn’t near his students, and red-black fury bubbled in his chest.

He’d been taken from them, then. Someone had taken him from his children, and what was left of the truck groaned under the weight of his fury.

Who would dare—he was a respected, important figure in the mutant-human struggles, a voice for peace and tolerance. He had Israel backing him, the former Director of Mossad’s friendship, and Senator Kennedy’s support in Congress. What use were these allies if he was _kidnapped,_ damn it?

“Politicians,” he spat, seeking out his chair. He found it easily enough—it was one of the few metallic objects undamaged—and levitated himself into it. He had work to do, then, and he cursed whoever had taken him. January was _busy,_ for fuck’s sake, and with Senator Robert Kelly spouting his ridiculous, hate-breeding drivel in Congress, Erik didn’t really have the time to wander the American countryside aimlessly looking for his home.

Outside, it was marginally warmer than it was in upstate New York. A fine layer of frost coated the ground, interrupted by the skid marks of the truck and various unfortunate vehicles—a convoy, most likely—that had been caught in Erik’s waking rage.

If Erik had to guess, he’d say he was in northern Virginia. The forests were about right, anyway, and he vaguely remembered hearing the weather _before—_

(guns, flashing muzzles, _no metal_ on the men invading his home—)

Erik’s lips twisted into a growl and he began to push the chair down the road, moving quickly. He needed to find a town, so he could call the mansion, call Israel, call Logan, if the damn man answered his phone—

 _Focus,_ he told himself, and narrowed his eyes. It was cold, brutally so, and he shook himself vigorously to ward of the chill. It was nowhere near as cold as Poland, and he’d lived through that. No American winter was going to kill him, even if he was seventy-something and not nearly as adaptable as he used to be.

It wasn’t snowing here, like it had been in New York. There had been a blizzard, Erik remembered, and that’s why he hadn’t seen the men coming—

He growled, frustrated. Memory flickered in and out of reach, dancing just beyond his fingertips, and he _hated_ it. He wanted—needed—to know what had happened so he knew if the children were alright, if he had to mourn them or avenge them or breathe a sigh of relief.

He felt too old for this. He hadn’t gone into the field in fifteen years—he was out of practice. Instincts that had once come naturally felt rusted, old, and useless.

He swore, dragging a hand through his hair.

With his powers he touched the metal all around him, tracking it. Power lines ran in all directions, cars moved far away—he’d have to avoid those, for now—and overhead an airplane, commercial, by the weight of it, shot by.

At the very edges of his range he felt buildings, more cars, the steady, thrumming pulse of a city.

He just had to get there, then.

With a heavy sigh Erik began to move, levitating the wheelchair and nudging it along, hiding in the trees. He felt a few cars shoot past but he didn’t dare trust that they were benign; he heard the sirens whistling behind him, and knew that his escape hadn’t gone unnoticed.

 _This is ridiculous,_ he thought sourly, rubbing his fingers together for warmth. _Really. I thought we’d evolved past blatant kidnapping._

The ‘60s and ‘80s were long gone—in the past two decades there hadn’t been a major mutant crisis, and relations between humans and mutants cooled, somewhat.

Of course there had always been the radicals, on both sides. Senator Robert Kelly, for one, had been howling for a “Mutant Registration Act” since he wormed his way into office, and the Brotherhood hadn’t let up, really.

Erik’s chest was tight, and it had almost nothing to do with the cold.

He didn’t want to think about the Brotherhood.

He focused instead on moving forward, towards the pulse of a city. His hands were cold, nearly frozen—fucking January—and his turtleneck, more for home wear than a trek through a frozen forest, was thin.

Erik shivered violently, cursing again.

He wanted to remember. He wasn’t _home,_ damn it, and he had been, and now he wasn’t, and he needed to know who and why, so he could show them their errors and return to his children.

He was cold.

Ice seemed to slip inside his bloodstream, flowing along with the iron he could feel there, always.

 _I’m too old for this,_ he realized. He was too old and too poorly prepared. He didn’t know how fast he could make it to the city, or if that city was even safe, if someone was hunting him.

Behind him, a few miles back now, he heard the wail of sirens pierce the frozen air. The police were at the wreckage, no doubt, and surrounded by the evidence of a mutant attack. Erik didn’t know if he’d left anyone alive, when he’d awoken, (he doubted it, really) and that would be seen as a sign of violence.

He swore again, struggling to keep his chair aloft. Damn thing. Made it harder to get places, which was why he rarely left the mansion, these days. The cold made it worse. The cold made his muscles ache, made all his old wounds throb. The chair dropped a few inches and he grunted. Why was this so hard? He’d lifted much heavier—submarines, planes, the Golden Gate Bridge. Why was a little chair so difficult to move?

The chair dipped and he grabbed the edges, trying to steady it, but there was something wrong, he felt _off,_ felt fuzzy, like he’d been drugged—

The chair tilted, out of his control, and dropped—

Erik Lehnsherr hit the icy ground and slept.

  
 **2.**

 _This better be good,_ Charles thought, cradling the phone to his ear and blinking gritty sleep out of his eyes.

The clock shone faintly—2:48 a.m. He bit back a groan. This was not good news, then.

“Hello?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, heavy, and he heard someone breathing. Charles frowned.

“Who is this?”

“You’re X, right?” The voice was deep and growling, and strangely familiar. Charles’s frown deepened.

“Who is this?”

There was another pause, muted muttering, and a muffled curse.

“Look,” said the voice. “I dunno if you’re X or not, and I don’t care, but if you are, there was an attack.”

“An attack?” Charles sat up, fingers curling tightly into his sheets. “Where?”

“The mansion.”

The telepath was suddenly, terribly cold. His hands shook, and he stared at them until they stopped shaking.

“The mansion,” he said slowly. “The school.”

“Yeah.”

Charles paused, listening intently.

The man on the other end hissed a sigh, and it sounded more like a growl than anything. Someone else was talking rapidly not too far away, a continuous stream of pitched, angry words.

“Look, bud,” said the voice. “I know you and Mags have your issues with each other. Fuck, I wouldn’t be calling if I didn’t have a choice, but Summers has been gone since October and his kid’s been captured too.”

Charles stayed silent.

The other man swore. “Fuck you,” he snapped. “Someone attacked the school, okay? All the kids and the Professor are gone. Your number was in the Professor’s desk, he wanted us to fucking call you if anything went wrong.”

Charles curled and uncurled his fingers, fighting back the onslaught of emotion— _rage grief betrayal,_ satisfaction, _disgust_ —that swarmed suddenly to life.

“What do you want from me,” he said.

The man on the other end of the line snarled, and Charles heard the sounds of a brief, intense scuffle.

“Hi,” said a new voice. In the background the first one was swearing, banging around. “I’m Wade.”

Charles blinked, nonplussed.

“What my friend is trying to say,” Wade continued, almost cheerfully, “is get the fuck over here, your buddy needs your help.”

“Magneto is not my ‘buddy,’” Charles said. “And you sound like… capable young men. Why don’t you just take care of this yourselves?”

There was another scuffle, and the first speaker returned. “We can’t do this by ourselves, you jackass,” he snapped. “Otherwise we wouldn’tve called you. We can’t _find_ him, alright?”

Charles paused, listening to the first speaker’s heavy, angry breathing and Wade’s nonstop chatter.

“Fuck you,” the man spat. “Just fuck you, okay? Mags needs your help. Whatever happened to you watching out for mutants, huh? He’s a mutant too, or have you forgotten?”

 _How could I forget?_ Charles sighed. “I’ll be at the mansion in ten hours,” he said, before he could change his mind, and hung up the phone with a click.

He sat in the dark, forcing air in and out, in and out, and his chest throbbed.

 _Grow up,_ he told himself viciously. _It’s been nearly twenty years. You should be over this by now._

It was nearly three in the morning in Geneva, which made it almost nine in Westchester—he could be there by morning if he took the jet.

Charles buried his face in his hands and breathed.

 _I have to do this,_ he thought, and tore himself free of the covers. The wood was cold underneath his bare feet, and he shuffled to the bathroom. He didn’t turn on the light.

 _I have to do this._

He would call the Brotherhood, then; they were still in America, still carrying on their work. Charles himself was only in Geneva until Senator Kelly passed the Mutant Registration Act, which Charles would then bring to the attention of humanitarians in the city.

 _See, Erik,_ he thought bitterly, _I’ve learned._

In the darkness, the mutant called X brushed his teeth, dressed, and shook himself awake. He hadn’t been sleeping well, recently—it was the headaches—and it showed under his eyes.

Dark sleepless bruises made him look ten years older than he was, and he wasn’t a young man. Wrinkles marred his face, deep lines cut into his skin, and his fingers were knotted with veins. All of his hair was gone (though that wasn’t age, not really) and he’d grown, if possible, even shorter, which was to be expected of a seventy-something year old man.

Charles smiled at his shadowy reflection, and left for his plane.

  
 **3.**

Logan wasn’t the kind of guy who worried, usually. He didn’t see much of a point to it. Either you could fix something or you couldn’t; there was no in-between, and he was just fine with life that way.

Since coming to the Academy for Gifted Students, however, Logan had noticed a definite increase in his worrying and stress levels.

First of all, there were the kids running around _everywhere,_ getting into _everything,_ and doing it _all the time._ Seriously. Logan wasn’t sure if it was just kids being kids, or if mutant kids in particular were idiots, but over the last seventeen years, Logan had spent more time at a hospital than he’d spent in his own damn bed.

And then there were the other teachers. Now Logan could’ve handled them on their own—only Storm was really, truly scary—but nearly all of them moonlighted as superheroes in their off-hours, which meant he spent half his time running around making sure they didn’t get themselves killed.

And finally, there was Magneto. Now Logan had the greatest respect for the man (and not just because Magneto could toss him out a window anytime he wanted), but there was just something _wrong_ with him, and Logan felt like he had to watch him and keep him from doing something ridiculous, like breaking out of Three Mile Island with _all_ of Stryker’s test subjects.

And Logan, unfortunately, was kind of attached to the whole, dysfunctional lot of them, which meant so much worry he was mildly amazed he wasn’t as white-haired as Mags.

 _It’s going to happen, though,_ he thought, as he paced around and around the hallway, scattering broken glass and splintered wood as he prowled.

“So this X guy,” Wilson said, tracking Logan with his eyes. He was polishing his swords with slow, careful movements, and each blade gleamed in the dim light. Wolverine felt his claws itch under his skin, slipping and sliding against his adamantuim-coated bones. Both old soldiers felt tension, _fury,_ stroking knife-sharp down their skin.

“What about him,” Logan grunted. Glass shards punched up through his shoes, and he relished the stabs of pain before his skin rippled closed.

“He’s the one we got out of Three Mile, right? The injured one.”

Logan paused, kept pacing. Wood splintered under his feet and he kicked it aside. “Yeah,” he said.

Wilson nodded. His swords shone. “The Professor gets letters from him, sometimes. Or used to, anyway. I haven’t noticed any for awhile. Ororo doesn’t like it.”

“I know,” said Wolverine. He scrubbed his face with his hand and kept pacing, around and around the shattered room.

“I remember him,” Wade continued. “You know? Mags kept him down in the labs for months, trying to reverse whatever Stryker did to him.”

“I _know_ , Wilson,” Logan growled. He couldn’t forget, actually, the feeling of rough, broken fingers—way different from Jean’s careful, familiar strokes—grasping through his mind. Charles Xavier had lived in the mansion for nearly six months, and those six months had been full of whispers, too soft to be screams, and constant, rattling presence.

It reminded Logan of war and death-gasps, and he wasn’t entirely sure why.

Wade Wilson was, for once, quiet. It was weird, and Logan’s skin itched, his claws shivering and inching towards the surface. He gritted his teeth, rolled his shoulders. Stepped through the destruction and missed the sound of kids laughing in their dorms.

 _Fuck,_ he thought. _I’m getting soft._

He paced.

“So you think X can help us?” Wilson said.

Logan shrugged, muscles contracting, expanding. He felt like a predator. “Maybe. He’s strong, I guess. I hear his telepathy’s gotten a little better.”

“Mags wanted us to call him.”

“Yeah.”

“Mags thinks X’ll help us.”

“Yeah.”

Wilson shook his head, still polishing the swords. “X saved me, you know. From Stryker. He was gonna start experiments on me next, after he was done with you. X showed up and Stryker decided to test him instead of me.”

Logan grunted. “That was luck. X didn’t go out of his way to save you. Fuck, if he’d known what was going to happen, he would’ve run the other way.”

“True,” Wilson admitted. “But he and Mags go way back, right? Way, way back. Mags trusts him, or did. He trusted X enough to keep him here at the school, with all of the kids.”

Logan shrugged again, a loose, frustrated movement.

“So we should trust him too,” Wilson pressed. “For now, anyway. And not, you know, kill him the second he steps through the door.”

Logan glared, rolling his shoulders. "I'll think about it," he said, and settled in to wait.

  
 **4.**

He woke, and it was cold and damp. Leftover panic twisted his limbs and he jerked, instinctively reaching out to protect himself—

Erik drew back, wounded, and reeled in the darkness. There was _nothing._ He was alone—the walls didn’t whisper, the wiring stayed silent, even the familiar hum of his chair was gone.

Where there had always been the noise, the rattling, groaning metal-song, there was _silence._

He couldn’t see. He couldn’t hear. He couldn’t _feel,_ there was a gaping, ragged void where his power had once been—

The only metal he could feel were stirrings of iron, too small to even touch, and he dimly heard someone take a breath.

“Ah,” said William Stryker. “I see you’re awake.”

Erik jerked back, a snarl building in his throat, _fury_ twisting hot and alive in his bones and drowning out the howling, gaping pain. “You,” he started, and subsided, inarticulate with raw, writhing rage.

“Me,” said Stryker. Some of Erik’s sight filtered back, and the room was all dark, deep shadows. There was no metal anywhere, only the little bits of iron in Stryker’s blood, because the walls were made of dully-gleaming plastic. His power recoiled, wounded, and he felt the loss keenly.

He glared. “You,” he started again, forcing words through his teeth. “You _attacked my children._ ”

“Nothing personal,” Stryker shrugged. “They’re alright, before you ask. Most of ‘em have shaken off the drugs by now, and they’re scared, but they’re alive.”

“I’m going to kill you,” Erik said, forcing calm control into his voice.

Stryker grinned. “Not this time, I don’t think. Look around you, _Professor._ You’re in a plastic box. The nearest metals are half a mile away through several feet of concrete. You’re drugged, and this time you don’t have Summers or your tame Wolverine hanging around.”

Erik smiled, showing the scientist his teeth. “You have the upper hand,” he conceded. “For now.”

Stryker’s grin turned sharp.

“So,” Erik said, leaning back. He was in some sort of plastic chair, and it wasn’t half as comfortable as his own had become, though he supposed that was sort of the point. He breathed, and let his fury cool, and words and coherent thoughts filter back into his mind. His fingers twitched, and he ached for metal, but he kept his face still and flat.  
Stryker glared.

“So,” Erik continued, “what do you have to gain by attacking a facility full of _children?_ The public will kill you for it, you know. They might be _mutant_ children, but they’re still children. People don’t like it when kids get hurt.”

Stryker shrugged. “This is war,” he said blandly. “There are casualties.”

“ _War?”_ Erik bit out, and saw red again. “You did this to start a war?

“Oh no,” said Stryker, and he adjusted his glasses. Shadows deepened his face, and Erik’s fingers curled, itching to wrap around that flabby throat and _squeeze_ —

“Then why?”

Stryker smiled again, straightened his shoulders. “My son, Jason,” he said, “is a mutant.”

Erik stilled, wary. “I know.”

“Quite an interesting ability, Jason has. It works like telepathy, almost, but it isn’t, not in the conventional sense. He gets into your mind, you see, and he sees what you _are,_ down to your bones, and then he… shows you things.”

The professor watched Stryker, and thought, for a moment, that something like pain glimmered in his face before it was gone.

“He’s never been good at controlling it,” Stryker continued. “He’s improved over the years, of course, but as a child, well.  
“My wife loved our son. She didn’t care that he was a mutant, really. It was happening all over the place, and we were just grateful that we could hide his. But Jason showed her _things._ He knew what she was afraid of, to her very core, and he played on that.”

Rage-grief shuttered across the scientist’s face. “She eventually put a power drill to her head, trying to drive the images out. I found her on the floor, and Jason was sitting in her blood like nothing was wrong.

“I loved my son. But what he did to my wife, _his mother,_ well.” Stryker paused, and his face closed off again. Ice crept back into his voice, hidden underneath the Southern twang. “Let’s just say Jason doesn’t do that sort of thing any more.”

Erik’s stomach twisted. _You experiment on him,_ he thought, remembering the hushed, frightened rumors he’d heard over the years. _You tortured and destroyed your own son._

“I didn’t capture you and your students to start a war,” Stryker said quietly. “I captured you to _end_ one.”

“There is no war,” Erik objected. “That’s what I’ve been doing for forty years, keeping us from a war.”

“There’s a war. There’s always been a war. It’s a quiet one, of course. We don’t fight it in Congress, or the streets. It’s fought in _homes,_ Mr. Lehnsherr, homes with parents and their mutated, dangerous children. I fought it; I lost my wife to it. And I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen ever again, _Professor,_ and that’s where _you_ come in.”

“Me?” Erik was wary now, alarmed. Stryker wasn’t just the garden-variety mad scientist. He was stark raving _insane,_ and he had _reason_ to be, and reason to fight his fight. He was _justified,_ in his mind, anyway, and Magneto knew from personal experience that the ones who felt justified and righteous were the most dangerous.

“You,” said the scientist, smiling again, “are going to build me Cerebro.”

“Cerebro?”

“Oh yes,” Stryker nodded. “Cerebro. You remember it, yes? Such a powerful little device, capable of connecting to every single mutant on the planet, with a telepath controlling it.”

“You have no telepath,” Erik said. “Not one strong enough to control it, anyway.” _Frost won’t let them near her. Jean couldn’t control it. And Charles is in Geneva; Stryker can’t touch him, if he could even use Cerebro in the first place._  
“Irrelevant,” Stryker said, waving a hand. “I don’t want the device to _work,_ I want it as insurance.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Not to you.”

Erik gritted his teeth. “I won’t build it for you,” he said. “I don’t have the plans, I don’t know how—”

“Also irrelevant.” Stryker tapped his pocket, and paper crinkled. “They were hard to find, but I found Dr. McCoy’s prototype plans, and I’ve made a few adjustments since then.”

 _Shit._

“No,” Erik said.

“Now now. I have your students, Mr. Lehnsherr, in case you’ve forgotten. It’d be a pity, wouldn’t it, if some of them went into the labs and just… never came out. They’re so _young_. I doubt they even know people would do that to them, and willingly.”

“Touch my children,” Erik said, and it was very, very even, “and die.”

“Oh, that hit a nerve. Come on, Lehnsherr. It’s not hard. Just build me this little device and I’ll gladly let you and your children loose. I have no use for them, really. I’m tired of pulling mutants apart.”

 _Liar._

“No.”

“No?” Stryker raised an eyebrow. “Your _students,_ Lehnsherr. You’d sacrifice them, over this?”

“Cerebro is too dangerous for someone like you to have,” Erik said, and his heart hurt. “You’re a killer. You’ll hunt my people down, one by one, and destroy them. My students and I are but thirty. _Millions_ of mutants’ lives far outweigh ours.” And he knew the costs of war. The lives of thirty, no matter how important they were to him, were less important than the lives of millions. His people as a whole were more important than his students.

Stryker sighed. “I expected this from you,” he said. “You’re one of those stubborn types, you know? Always doing what they think is right, not swayed by anyone else. I can respect that.”

Erik smiled, sharp and humorless.

“But,” the scientist continued, “I don’t have time for it today. So,” he gestured at the door, whistling sharply, and it slid open. Light spilled into the plastic room, and Erik winced.

A man stood there, tall, pale, and scarred. His eyes were blank, unfocused, and mismatched.

“This is my son,” Stryker said cheerfully. “Jason.”

 **5.**

Charles stared at the empty, broken shell of his childhood home, and for the first time in years rage threatened to swallow him whole.

 _My home,_ he thought. _Erik’s home, a safe place for_ my _people_.

And it was destroyed. Windows gaped, shattered, and man-sized holes were punched through the walls. Half the West Wing was gone, the roof and wall blown out, the edges charred black. As he stepped into the main hall, he crushed glass and splintered wood, and paused to pick up a child’s toy, a floppy little stuffed rabbit.

Charles carefully brushed off the dust and glass shards. Who had the rabbit belonged to? Was she dead now? Or worse?

“You’re X?” The harsh, growling voice from the phone call rattled to Charles’s left, and he turned slowly, carefully feeling out the edges of Wolverine’s mind.

It was wild, boiling, and Wolverine flinched back and snarled. He stood in the kitchen’s doorway, framed by the light, and silver claws gleamed. “Stay outta my head,” he warned.

Charles swore to himself. Stryker’s _cure_ had, among other things, taken the ability to go into someone’s mind without them noticing. Everyone felt it now, and it was nearly impossible to do things quietly, these days.

“My apologies.” He could feel the other, Wade, just behind Wolverine, and his mind was the same vicious, seething blood-hunger.

 _And Erik lets them_ teach?

“Charles Xavier,” he said, striding forward with a hand outstretched.

Wolverine blinked, caught off guard, and eyed his hand before retracting those shining, wicked claws and shaking it.

“Logan,” he said.

Charles smiled, disarming. “And what do you teach?”

Wolverine eyed him. “Art.”

He peered behind Wolverine, caught Wade’s eyes and smiled. Wade smiled back, bounding forward to shake his hand.  
“Wade Wilson. Gotta say, you don’t seem like the infamous, evil, brain-stealing terrorist the news makes you out to be. You’re kind of professor-y.”

“Professor-y?”

“Yeah,” Wilson said, still shaking his hand. “You know, like you belong in a classroom or some stuffy old library, yeah?” He smiled suddenly, showing Charles his teeth. His mind, hot and hungry, danced. “But that’s how you get ‘em, right? No one suspects the kindly old professor to turn around and wipe ‘em out. I like it.”

Charles eyed him, looking between Wilson and Logan warily.

 _They’re not entirely sane, are they?_

“I teach Phys Ed,” Wilson continued. “You look like you’d teach literature. Mags teaches literature. And French. And Political Science, whatever the fuck that is. ”

“He doesn’t shut up,” Logan said. “You get used to it.” Out of the two teachers, Wolverine was the most on edge, his whole body coiled like a giant, sideburned spring. He watched Charles warily and his claws writhed beneath his skin. He clearly remembered that, more often than not, he was fighting Charles and his people.

Wilson, on the other hand, wasn’t nearly so obvious. If Charles hadn’t been a telepath, he wouldn’t have seen the violence shivering under his skin, the way his thoughts kept flicking back to his swords and bloodshed.

“So,” X said, looking between the two killers. “What happened here?”

Logan growled, low and deep, and his hands were clenched so tight they creaked. Charles trailed through his mind lightly, as lightly as he could, skimming the surface thoughts, and Logan didn’t react; he didn’t notice.

“We were out,” Logan said, gesturing at himself and Wilson. _Recon_ his mind said, flashing the image of a dark alley, feelings of the hunt, _yes we were made for this, let’s get him._

“We came back around seven-thirty,” Wilson chimed in, “and found the mansion like this. Nearly everyone was gone, Mags, the teachers, the kids. There were bodies in the hallway. Mags got some of them, Scott, Jean, and Ororo got a few more, but they’d been overwhelmed.”

“Plastic weapons,” Wolverine snarled. “They were using plastic weapons, so Mags couldn’t disarm them.”

“Were they trying to kill?”

Logan shook his head. “No. They were using tranquilizers. We found a few that missed and hit the wall or something.”

 _Rage,_ his mind sang, and burned. _Mine. My home._

“We came back and found a few looting,” Wilson said, and he grinned. His mind flickered to his swords, and blood, and Wolverine’s did the same.

 _Kill,_ they thought, and Charles raised an eyebrow.

“And you didn’t think to interrogate them?”

Wolverine scowled. “Tried,” he muttered. “He lost blood too quickly. We have one. He’s still alive, I think.”

“I see.”

“Not everyone was gone, though,” Wilson cut in. “We found some students hiding out in the lower levels.”

“Where are they now?”

“Massachusetts,” Logan said. “We sent them to Frost and Sean. Their school’s big enough to hold ours for a little while.”

Charles nodded, approving. Getting the children out of harm’s way was good. Perhaps Erik knew what he was doing with these two after all.

“Take me to the one who’s still alive,” Charles said. “I’ll see what I can get out of him”:

Logan nodded, turning sharply and wading back through the destruction. Wood and glass punctured his shoes and skin, dotting the floor with blood, but even as Charles watched his skin sizzled and rushed back together.

 _Fascinating._

Wilson picked around the debris with considerably more care, crunching around the worst of the glass, and Charles followed him. The three wove their way through the mansion, and the telepath looked at his old home and felt _fury_ surge in his blood.

Doors were thrown open, torn from their hinges, tables lay on their sides, clothes and bed sheets were scattered among the broken wood and glass, evidence of surprise and desperate attempts to flee.

Anger simmered, and Charles held on to it, bottled it up to let out later, where it could do the most damage.

Every now and then there was a black-suited body curled in the rubble. Some lay dead without any sign on their bodies at all, others smoked faintly, others still lay in pools of blood with pens, silverware, and other metal fixtures buried in their chests.

Charles passed each of these bodies with a sense of grim satisfaction, and followed Wilson and Logan deeper into the mansion.

Logan punched a pad on the wall and an elevator whirred open. Charles knew where it led, too—down, into what had once been his father’s nuclear bunker. He had spent many months there, in the clean white labs, while Erik tried to put him back together again.

Charles smiled thinly. It had worked, sort of.

They went down, and the labs were considerably less destroyed than the upper levels. There were bodies, though, cut apart by Wilson’s blades or Wolverine’s claws.

“We found the kids down here,” Wilson said. “One of the older ones knew the codes and he brought ‘em here to hide.”

“Shut up, Wade,” Logan muttered, and he stopped in front of a locked steel door. Inside, Charles felt the mind of Stryker’s only surviving man, shivering, alive with fear and pain.

His smile grew. Excellent.

The inside of the room was blank, barren. It looked like no one had decided what to do with it yet, and just left it as it was, intimidating and unfriendly.

The man was tied to a chair in the middle and he shook, flickering between Logan, Wilson, and Charles like he didn’t know which one to be more afraid of.

 _Oh, me,_ Charles thought. _You should definitely be more afraid of me._

He smiled at the man and leaned forward, pressing his fingers to the man’s temple. “This will probably hurt,” he said. “You can thank your boss for that.”

The man whimpered, tried to stutter something—a prayer, perhaps, or a plea—and Charles _dove_ —

 _Don’t kill me don’t kill me_

 _Wolverine, that’s Wolverine watch him he can’t die_

 _Get all the students, get the old professor those are the most important_

 _Stop,_ Charles ordered, and the man’s—Rick, was his name—mind shuddered to a halt, all the swirling, feverish thoughts dropping away.

Dimly, he was aware of the man screaming, howling, writhing away from his fingers and thoughts.

Charles carefully pulled through layer after layer, organizing Rick’s scattered mind. Rick and his fellows had been under orders to capture every last mutant in the mansion. They were expressly forbidden from killing anyone, and their main goal was Magneto—

They had to capture, and take, and look for any technology superior to their own—

 _Alkali Lake._

Charles withdrew, dragging the mental image of a peaceful lake, a great dam, and a twisting, huge facility underneath it. This was Stryker’s preferred base, the one he’d kept hidden for decades, built up year after year.

“Alkali Lake,” he said, and Logan twitched. He frowned. “You know it?”

“No,” Logan said slowly. “I don’t think so.”

 _Interesting._ He’d have to look into that later, but the matter at hand now was Erik, and getting him out of Alkali Lake before his blood paid for Stryker’s advance against mutant-kind.

“Gentlemen,” he said, straightening. Rick slumped forward, eyes glazed, and didn’t make another sound. His mind bled.

Logan and Wilson looked at each other and their thoughts called for blood. Charles smiled.

“Gentlemen, will you work with me?”

“Yes,” Logan said immediately.

“Good. Now, could you direct me to a telephone? I should call the Brotherhood.”

Wilson rolled his eyes. “We can take a lake,” he said. “Easy. Wolverine here can’t die, and no one can hit me, and you can do _that_ to people.” He waved a hand at the drooling Rick.

Charles shook his head. “My Brotherhood can only help,” he said firmly. “From Rick’s mind, Alkali Lake is Stryker’s oldest, most fortified base. And he’s probably prepared for an attack, because you two weren’t captured.”

Wilson shrugged, cut Logan a glance.

Wolverine bared his teeth. “Fine by me,” he said, and it was a snarl. “As long as none of ‘em get in my way.”

“They won’t,” Charles promised. “They know enough about you to avoid you, without Magneto around to keep you from killing them.”

Logan grinned. “Call your people,” he said. “We should leave in what, three hours?”

“Sounds good,” Wade grinned.

Charles nodded. “Three hours it is. Now, phone?”

Logan nodded, and the three mutants left the blank, empty room. As he walked away, Charles paused, turned his thoughts like razor blades back to Rick.

 _Die,_ he thought, and Rick did.

  
 **6.**

 _This is a very nice jet,_ Charles thought, leaning back into the comfortable seat. _The Brotherhood doesn’t have anything this nice. I like it._

The jet tore through the air, racing towards Alkali Lake, and Charles leaned back and observed his two companions.

Logan was piloting, eyes narrowed, vicious focus rolling off him in tangible waves. Wilson was reclined in the copilot’s seat, his eyes closed, thoughts turned to his swords.

It was fascinating, really, less like people-watching and more like watching two highly efficient predators hone in on their kill.

 _Dangerous,_ he thought, and trailed his thoughts through the earth below him. He felt people flinch, recoil, clutch their heads in pain as barbed-wire tendrils of consciousness trailed through their own.

It was bloody annoying. Stryker’s cure had taken smooth, subtle strands that only the most aware people could feel touching their minds and turned them into sharp, jagged coils that lashed out and destroyed, no matter how hard Charles worked to smooth the edges.

The most subtle he could be was reading the very surface of a person’s thoughts, like he was doing with Wolverine and Wilson (who had settled on the name Deadpool, for reasons unknown to Charles. Logan’s suggestions Motormouth and Obnoxious Little Shit fit so much better.) He couldn’t go any deeper without letting someone _know_ their mind was being invaded.

Sometimes, it was incredibly frustrating.

Other times, as with Rick, it was _satisfying._

“Wilson,” Logan said, and Deadpool’s eyes snapped open. “We’re almost to the meeting point.”

Charles reached out, found the minds of the Brotherhood.

 _Boss,_ said Angel, reaching back, and he smiled.

 _Hello. We’re coming in._

 _Good, ‘cause I think Sabertooth is about ready to eat Toad._

 _Oh?_ Charles suppressed a sigh. After all these years, he was fond of his Brotherhood, really he was, but sometimes he felt like he was the professor watching over a bunch of superpowered children.

 _Tell him to wait until I get there, at least._

 _Will do, boss._

The jet began its descent, aimed skillfully at a larger swath in the middle of the forest. Charles settled back, waiting for the telltale _thump_ of landing, and was out of his seat and down the ramp as soon as the plane’s engines fully shut off.

Angel was waiting for him, her wings open but limp, blowing faintly in the bitter breeze.

She smiled. “So,” she said. “We rescuing Magneto now?”

He gave her a hard, calculating look, and she stared unflinchingly back.

“Yes,” he said. “We’re rescuing _mutants_ from a man who likes to cut them open to see how they work.”

“Just checking, boss.” She craned her neck, peering around him at Wilson and Logan as they prowled from the jet. She grinned. “Bringing the big guns, I see.”

From the trees, Charles felt Sabertooth’s mind go _white-rage-mine-Jimmy-mineminemine,_ and he frowned.

 _Creed,_ he snapped, prodding the man, and Creed growled at him.

 _Fuck off._

Charles narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, shoving at Sabertooth’s furious, white-lined thoughts. Now that he thought about it, Sabertooth’s hunter-thoughts felt rather familiar.

He looked at Logan again, and considered.

 _Interesting._

Angel whistled, calling the Brotherhood out, and they trotted from the trees, a dozen of them, circling Wolverine and Deadpool.

Sabertooth hung back, clinging to the tree line, and Charles could tell from here that his eyes were dark and fire-bright.

 _Behave,_ Charles warned him.

“So,” he said out loud, clapping his hands. “We have to get inside the base. Any ideas?”

“Blast open the door,” Wilson said cheerfully. His fingers tapped a rhythm on the blades. “Or cut it open. Oh, hey, why don’t you do your thought-thing and have them open it for us? Or kill themselves? Or—”

“Shut _up,_ Wilson,” Logan snarled. His eyes had found Sabertooth’s, and the two were half-growling at each other across the frosty grass.

 _Stop it,_ Charles told them. _Sort what ever this is out_ later.

Logan bared his teeth, but refocused on the task at hand.

Angel tilted her head to the side, considering. “What about using you two?” she said.

Charles blinked, rocked back on his heels. “That might work.”

“Wait, what?”

“You and I,” Charles told Wolverine. “And Wilson too, we’ve been Stryker’s experiments. Stryker will _recognize us._ ”

“Oh,” Logan said. “So we can surprise him, maybe get him to open the door?”

“It’s worth a shot,” Angel said. “We don’t have to work as much for it, anyway.”

Charles nodded, satisfied. He turned to Wolverine. “You up for it?”

Logan shook himself, rolling his shoulders, and his metal-crusted bones cracked. Sabertooth growled thinly.

“Let’s go,” Logan said, and Charles motioned for the rest to follow. They crossed the frosty ground and skirted the lake, hiding in the shadows of the dam. With his power, Charles felt the consciousnesses of others—human and mutant—far below, spread out like a spider web, and he guided them to a rusty, seemingly unused door.

The door was ancient, and caked in reddish-brown rust, but the hinges were oiled and didn’t make a sound when Angel broke the lock and nudged the door open.

Charles met Wolverine’s eyes, and nodded.

Logan slipped forward, into a long, deep tunnel, and shouted Stryker’s name.

The door inside creaked open, and Logan’s mind boiled blood red, and then everything went to shit.

The Brotherhood streamed in after Wolverine, and men pounded out towards them, and Wilson was bounding ahead, swords drawn, cleaving arms and legs and throats.

Logan roared, claws flashing, and took on five men at once. Sabertooth crashed past him on all fours, breaching the barrier of bodies and rolling into the deeper rooms. Angel was in the air, fire dripping, and Charles ducked and wove, lashing out, his mind full of razors.

Within a few moments, the mutants had pushed the humans back, trampled them underfoot, and Charles grinned. They could do this—

And then fire washed over them, and angry buzzing filled the air, and more people— _mutants_ —poured out.

 _Stop!_ Charles ordered, reaching to their minds, but no one did. Their thoughts were distant, blank, wrapped in something like _dreams—_

 _beach warm happy safe, hey, that man’s stealing her purse!_

 _fight club, fight club, this is just like fight club, cool!_

 _don’t look at them they’ll eat me they’ll eat me don’teatme_

—and he jerked back, instinctively trying to rid himself of that black cloud. The humans fell underneath mutant onslaught from both sides, but mutant clashed with mutant and blood flew—

 _Have to stop it,_ Charles thought, and dove into the nearest mind, ripping at the black dream-cloud. He fought, and the cloud fought back, and his heart sank as his allies fought and howled around him.

 _This,_ he thought grimly, settling in for a battle, _is going to be a long fight._

***

“So,” Ororo Munroe said, pacing back and forth. “When are we going to do this?”

“As soon as fucking possible,” Raven muttered, flexing her fingers. Her hands rippled and her eyes were yellow and bright.

“Ms. Raven said a bad word!” one of the little ones hissed, and Bobby Drake pulled him aside, whispering anxiously in his ear.

“Thanks for that,” Storm groaned. “They’re all going to start saying that now, I hope you know. Erik’s going to be _pissed._ ”

“Ms. Munroe said one too!”

 _Shit._

Raven’s lips twitched. “I’ve taught them worse,” she said quietly. “Remember that one field trip we had to the Natural History Museum?”

“Oh _god,_ don’t even talk about that, that was so embarrassing.”

The older mutant grinned.

“I can’t believe we got Scott to put it on his head,” Jean added fondly, grinning.

Scott groaned. “One time,” he muttered. “ _One time,_ years ago when I was stupid, and you’ve _never let it go._ ”

Storm laughed, and some of the children giggled, relaxing now that their teachers appeared to be calm. She fought to keep the smile on her face, for them, because they were in a dark, scary place. They’d been ripped from their beds, dragged by men with masks and guns in the middle of the night. They were _terrified,_ and it made lightning crackle under Ororo’s skin.

She itched to let it go.

Scott and Jean were having similar problems. Red light glimmered behind Scott’s glasses and Jean’s eyes were doing the fire-thing again, like they did when she was well and truly pissed, and this time there was no Mags around to pin her down until she _stopped._

Not that Storm wanted her to stop. An angry Jean could probably bust them out of here, and as long as the children were tucked away safely…

 _No,_ she thought. _There’s a better way than_ that.

And Storm was going to get them out of this mess. William Stryker had _no right_ to attack a _school._ It couldn’t be legal. And she’d tear the base apart to get to him, to show him that you _did not attack a bunch of children._ She’d never attack human children, just to get at humans. Hell, _X_ wouldn’t attack human children. It was wrong.

Stryker, apparently, didn’t realize that.

“Relax,” Raven murmured, and Storm snapped her head to look at the older teacher. “Don’t let them see how angry you are.”

Storm closed her eyes and breathed, forcing the lightning down, making it cool. The young ones didn’t have to see. The older ones, Bobby, John, Kitty, and Rogue, they knew her anger. They were nearly adults themselves; of _course_ they knew her fury, because they looked at how the government treated mutants and felt it too.

Her stomach rolled. Mutants couldn’t win, these days. On one side, the Friends of Humanity beat and lynched a new mutant every day. On another, Senator Robert Kelly came at them with the Mutant Registration Act, inciting Congress into a seething mob. And on another, William Stryker attacked in the middle of a snowstorm to drag _children_ off for his experiments.

The thing was, Storm wouldn’t be nearly as pissed if it had been her captured, or the other teachers, or even Magneto, because they expected that sort of thing. They were old soldiers, used to it, and they could take care of themselves.  
But Stryker had gone after _children,_ and rage made her blood crackle—

“ _Storm,_ ” Raven hissed, and she grabbed Ororo’s elbow.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “I just—”

Mystique’s eyes were yellow and sympathetic. “I know,” she said. “Breathe.”

Jean suddenly sucked in a breath, sharp and excited. Her eyes were distant and fuzzy, like she was in someone’s mind, and she grinned.

“I have one,” she breathed. “I have a guard. He wasn’t expecting me, I got in!”

Instantly, the older mutants crowded her, leaning in to listen.

“He’s coming this way,” Jean said. “Hang on, I’ll have him open the door.”

And, to Storm’s wicked delight, the door creaked open, and she sprang.

  
 **7.**

 _“My son,” says Edie Lehnsherr, combing through Erik’s hair. He wrinkles his nose, moves her hand away gently._

 _“Mama,” he laughs, half exasperated, half fond. “I’m thirty years old. You have to stop doing that.”_

 _She smiles at him, her face lined and happy. “You’re never too old for this,” she murmurs, cupping his face. “Now go on. The Americans need you to do something for them. Can you do that? They’ve been so kind to us. Go help them.”_

 _His face twists. “I don’t want to,” he says, and it is like waking up. “I can’t.”_

 _She frowns. “That’s no way to treat the people who took us in after the war,” she scolds. “Go help the Americans. They need it.”_

 _“No,” he says, backing away, nearly tripping over his feet. Walking is hard, like he’s forgotten how, and it_ hurts—

The pain jarred him awake, and he sucked in a breath and glared at Jason Stryker.

“Stop it,” he said, and his voice was rough.

Jason blinked his vacant eyes, and Erik’s mouth filled with water—

 _He clings to Charles’s hand as they’re lifted up out of the water, and the sea sluices off of them and onto the deck._

 _He’s soaked, shivering, the taste of salt strong in his mouth, and Charles Xavier is looking at him, all wide eyes and dripping, floppy hair._

 _“You’re like me,” Erik breathes, still choking on seawater and holding on to Charles like he’s afraid he’ll disappear._   
_Charles grins, offers a hand. “Come on,” he says, helping Erik to his feet, and Erik’s unsteady, like he’s not used to walking. “I’m so happy I found you, my friend.”_

 _Erik stumbles after him, too caught up in the water and_ i am not alone, there’s someone like me _to resist._

 _“We’ve needed someone like you for a long time,” Charles says happily. “We’re trying to build a device, you see, to find others like us, and you’re_ perfect _.”_

 _Erik stops, hesitates, holds back. Charles turns to him, blue eyes brilliant and wide and cracking._

 _“Come on,” he encourages._

 _“No,” Erik says, unsure, drawing back. “No, I’m not supposed to—”_

 _“Come on,” Charles says lower, deeper, his eyes vivid and stark as he steps forward, too close. “I’ll make it worth your while,” he’s saying, even as he’s trailing kisses down Erik’s neck, his jaw—_

“No,” Erik gasps, and fights, dragging himself free. “ _No,_ I won’t.”

Jason blinks, and suddenly there’s snow.

 _“Hey,” says the soldier, and he’s dark-haired and wild-eyed, and so strangely familiar Erik stops and stares. His legs hurt, and he’s holding on to his mama so tightly no one will_ ever _take her away._

 _“Hello,” he mutters warily, because the American soldiers are the good guys, right? His mama and papa said so, and his mama and papa are never, ever wrong._

 _“You wanna get out of here, little guy?” Another soldier, taller, his hair blonde and his eyes bright blue—Erik shies away almost instinctively—steps over, and his face is warm and kind._

 _Erik nods, and his mama squeezes his hand._

 _“Come on,” the blonde soldier says, offering his big, gloved hand. There’s a shield strapped to his back, smooth, and Erik kinda wants to touch it. “You just gotta do something for us real quick, okay? Then we can get you out of here.”_

 _“No,” Erik gasps, and pulls away, falling over in the snow—_

“Jason,” he gasped, and his chest hurt. “Jason, stop it.”

Jason didn’t.

 _“How could you do this?” Erik snarls, and_ fury _tears from in waves. In front of him is Charles, Charles,_ his _Charles, who never hurt anyone ever, who’s in a wheelchair and strapped in to Cerebro with his eyes vacant and blank and a hundred million red lights swimming lazily around his head._

 _Erik steps forward, shaking with fury, so much fury, he hasn’t been this angry since Cuba, when he turned the missiles back and Charles was shot in the back._

 _Cerebro hums, and it would be so easy to just reach out and_ pull, _twitch this and that and build—_

“No,” he choked.

 _He’s running, running and running and running, and no one can catch him as his legs eat up the earth._

 _He laughs, wild, because he’s_ missed _this and he hears Charles whooping in the background, farther and farther away._  
 _Up ahead is the satellite dish, and underneath it a pile of scrap metal, and he can run and run and run, it would be easy to just reach out and put those pieces of metal together—_

“Stop.” His voice is cracked and hoarse, and he’s digging his fingers into plastic so hard they’re bleeding.

Jason blinks, vacant, unhearing.

“Stop,” he said, and then he tasted the _sand—_

 _It’s hot. It’s hot and blinding and the sun is shattering off the sand, splinters of light that stab and confuse and glint off the dull iron-gray submarine._

 _His mouth tastes like blood and saltwater, and he’s having a hard time standing up straight. The plane went down, hard, and knocked them all a little loose, but they’re standing tall now, all of them, even the children, and pride swells in Erik’s gut._   
__

_The sub’s cracked in half and Shaw’s people stagger from it, and he bares his teeth. He doesn’t want to kill them, but he will, to get to Shaw._

 _The two groups stand apart, a brilliant stretch of sand glittering between them, and Erik feels energy tear down his arms like lightning._

 _His clears his throat._

 _“Where’s Shaw?” he demands, and Charles is steady beside him._

“No,” Erik hissed, and he jerked, _fighting_ it, and Jason was like knives in his head.

 _Shaw explodes from nowhere, energy sparking his fingertips, a snarl on his face as he goes for Charles, and Erik howls, lashing out with the metal._

 _Strips tear from the submarine to wind around Shaw’s wrists; they’re fought off._

 _Charles ducks, a nuclear-powered fist missing him by inches, and Erik snarls, takes the coin in his hand and_ throws _it—_

“Jason,” he wheezed, fingers clawing plastic, face twisting.

From the shadows Stryker watched, and his eyes gleamed.

 _Shaw staggers, head bounding and rebounding inside the quivering helmet, and there’s a dent in the side now, blood is trickling down Shaw’s neck._

 _Erik lunges, wrenches the helmet free, and Shaw brings a crackling hand towards his chest—_

DIE, _Charles shouts, the thought trembling and howling, and Shaw’s mouth tears open, a gasp, a cry, before his eyes go blank and he falls_.

 _“You killed him,” Erik whispers, more stunned than anything, because_ Charles _killed someone, that doesn’t happen._

 _“I’m sorry,” Charles says, eyes wide. “He was going to kill you, and I couldn’t—couldn’t let him—”_

 _“It’s alright,” Erik finds himself saying, because it_ is, _Shaw is dead, Charles was protecting him, Charles_ cares—

“ _Nein,_ ” Erik choked out, through gritted teeth and the hard, uncompromising lump in his throat. “No, I will not—”

 _Azazel takes Charles’s hand, and suddenly they’re home again, battered and bruised but_ alive.

 _“So,” says Charles, satisfied, exhausted, beautiful. Erik can’t look away from him. He smiles brilliantly, eyes Cuban-sky blue. “Want to help me rebuild Cerebro? So we can find_ others, _can lead them, teach them?”_

 _Erik can’t speak. He wants to, and his hands shake, and he_ wants—

 _Charles offers him a hand, a goofy smile on his face, and something inside Erik breaks._

 _“Alright,” he says raggedly, and it feels like he’s lost a war, but it’s worth it to see Charles_ smile _like that. “Just tell me what to do.”_

 _Charles beams, and kisses Erik on the cheek. “Alright,” he says. “First, you have to create the mainframe.”_

 _And Erik throws out his hands, calling the metal to him._

All around him, metal started to groan and snap into place, and Stryker laughed, and Jason’s eyes were blank, vacant, and a little sad. He turned away, and Erik Lehnsherr was crying.

 

 **8.**

“ _Fuck,_ ” Logan swore, above the roar of fighting. His claws dripped and he howled, ripping savagely into one of the mind-controlled mutant’s sides.

“Don’t kill them,” Charles snapped. “They’re still mutants, they’re just under someone else’s control.”

Logan snarled. “Fuck you, bud. They’re trying to kill me. I’m going to kill ‘em right back.”

The telepath would have argued, but he was too busy trying to work as many mutants loose as possible, and it felt like someone had taken his skull, cracked it open, filled it with nails, and was now rattling it vigorously.

 _Stryker must die._

Mutants fell left and right, some killed, some stunned, and some (precious few, too few) freed from whatever was bending them to Stryker’s will.

Sabertooth howled, vaulted over a fire-breather, and landed beside Charles on all fours, a growl twisting his lips, and he glowered at Logan.

 _Mine-Jimmy-mineminemine no one can kill you but_ me—

 _Not_ now, _Creed._

“Hey, Wolverine,” called Wilson, grinning madly, as he neatly separated a many-armed mutant from about half of his limbs. “Twenty-four!”

Wolverine swore. “Twenty,” he muttered, and charged back into the fray.

Sabertooth growled, and Charles hissed a breath. “If you want to kill him so bad, keep anyone else from doing it,” he snapped, and Creed glowered, bounding back into the writhing bodies.

Another three mutants reeled, released from their illusions, and blinked.

 _Not enough, damn it._

There were still forty-some mutants running around under Stryker’s power, and Charles’s head was threatening to split in two—he needed to find the _source_ of the rot, not treat the symptoms.

 _Angel, Logan,_ he snapped. _I’m going deeper. Can you hold them here?_

Two affirmations later, Charles was racing down deeper and deeper into Stryker’s labyrinth, following the dark, swirling mass of dreams that spread through the minds of mutants like a taint, a stain, visible only to a telepath but _damn_ ugly.

He passed labs, operating rooms, rusty, bloodstained cages, and Charles’s fury rose, lashing out. Any human guard with fifty feet dropped as he passed, and he snuffed them out like candles.

 _Torture_ my _people, will you,_ he snarled. 

Farther and farther he went, humans fleeing from him, and light grew watery and dim. His ears popped. He was low in the earth, and there couldn’t be much farther to go, the black cloud was just ahead, thick as fog, he could barely see _anything_ —

“Hello, X,” said a voice, and a gun snapped out and hit Charles’s nose, dropping him like a rock.

 _Stryker,_ Charles thought, and tried to lash out, but the black dream-cloud was _everywhere,_ covering everything, and he realized that Stryker had a helmet.

Hands grabbed him, dragged him to his feet and held him fast.

He growled, focusing all his razor blades on Stryker, slipping and sliding at the helmet, and the dream-cloud brushed his mind, a stutter-flash of _happybeachcubaiknowyoutelepathi_ know _you_.

He flinched, and tried to hide it.

“Come,” said Stryker. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Charles stared.

“Erik Lehnsherr is an annoyance,” Stryker elaborated, clearly amused, “but not a real problem. He prefers politics and covert missions to all-out war, you see. He’s dangerous, of course, and violent enough if we rattle him, but you, on the other hand, well. You brought Wolverine _and_ Wade Wilson with you. Bloodshed doesn’t shake you at all, does it?”

“You attacked a school,” Charles said lowly, viciously. “And I’ll kill you for it.”

“The school was a distraction,” Stryker said. “As I was saying, Lehnsherr’s annoying, but not my _real_ problem. You are.”  
Charles blinked, suddenly afraid. He’d heard that tone of voice, once, and then his power had been damaged forever.

“You’re much harder to find, though, you know? I knew where Lehnsherr was, and I remembered how _eagerly_ he came to your rescue, back in ’85. I figured you’d do the same for him.”

“Erik was bait,” Charles whispered, eyes wide. He _understood._

“Not quite, but close enough. I needed him to build Cerebro, but more importantly, I needed him to lure _you_ here. What goes is a machine like that if you don’t have a telepath to use it, right?”

Charles went very cold.

“You want to use Cerebro,” he said. “So you can find all of the mutants and hunt us down.”

Stryker’s grin was edged and bloody. “Close.” He opened the door behind him, and beckoned to the two men holding Charles still. He fought them, lashing at their minds, but they wouldn’t fall, they too were under the black dream-cloud, and didn’t feel pain.

Stryker led them into a huge, dimly-lit room, and Charles couldn’t help but stare. Metal whirled, rose and spun high above them, twisting and fitting with other panels neatly. It looked like Hank’s Cerebro, but _not_ , and Charles didn’t know what to make of it.

Wires tangled together neatly, panels snapped, lights whirred and hummed to life. Cerebro took shape, and Stryker grinned.

In the center of whirling metal stood the black cloud, a man with blank, vacant eyes and _power_ clinging to his skin like poison.

Erik sat in a plastic chair beside the man, hands outstretched, metal spinning at his command, and tears streamed down his face.

For a second Charles whited out, _ragefurykillkillkill_ welling up, unstoppable, and he lashed out—

Only to have his power bounce off Stryker’s helmet, reduced to harmlessness.

Fury made him inarticulate, and he growled.

 _Erik, Erik, I’m so sorry, this is my fault, he wants_ me—

“Jason,” Stryker said sweetly, and the black-cloud of a man turned. “This is Charles Xavier. You know what to do.”

And the black cloud focused on him, poisonous dream-words whispered, a hundred of them, a thousand, and Charles _howled_ —

The last of Cerebro clicked into place, and it was then Charles noticed the helmet, just the right size and shape for his head, resting in front of a panel of blinking lights.

  
 **9.**

Lightning crackled down the hallways, and Ororo grinned fiercely. Behind her, Scott and Jean led the children carefully, whispering reassurances. Ahead, Mystique, Bobby, and John spread destruction, leaving the hallways suspiciously empty and smoking.

William Stryker had underestimated Magneto’s mutants.

Sure, the Professor was old and occasionally absent-minded, these days, but he made sure _each and every mutant_ in his school knew how to protect him- or herself.

Stryker had, apparently, forgotten that.

The mutants bulldozed a path through the sprawling base, checking every hallway and door for the way out. They hadn’t found one yet, but no one was going to stop them from finding one. No one _could_ stop them, at this point. They were kicking _ass._

Somewhere far away, Storm heard yelling, bangs, and screaming. Somebody somewhere was _fighting_ , and she was half-tempted to go check it out. Was it Mags, wreaking holy hell with some metal? Or Logan and Wilson, cheerfully ripping everyone up?

 _Or X,_ she thought, and wasn’t sure if she hated the idea or liked it. On one hand, X fucked things up. He tried to do “right,” sure, or whatever the fuck he thought right was, but he just caused problems. And made the Professor sad, and Ororo _hated_ when the Prof got sad. On the other, he cared about Magneto, or had once, a long time ago, and he _owed_ Erik. X’d do what needed to be done.

 _Gotta stay out of it,_ she thought, and rushed on down the hallways, letting lightning fizzle in her blood and glow in her eyes.

Behind her, Jean’s mind swooped out, tinged with confusion, and Storm stopped, turned to face her.

She had time to see Jean’s eyes go red-orange with fear and then she went _down_ —

Horrible, awful screaming ripped into her mind, blade-sharp, and a hundred thousand voices hummed and sang _die mutant die die mutant die,_ and Ororo clutched her ears and wailed—

***

Wolverine grinned, viciously ripping into a huge, thundering mutant and digging in deep. The mutant howled, twisting, and Logan felt his metal bones rattle.

He snarled, pulling out, and shoved the bigger mutant to the side where he crashed, twitched, and lay still.

“Twenty-eight!” he bellowed, and Wilson laughed.

One of X’s mutants, Sabertooth, snorted, his teeth bared.

Logan glared. He didn’t know why, but Sabertooth was _familiar,_ and if he wasn’t currently shredding people to keep the Professor and the kids alive, he’d be circling the other man until he _knew_ what kind of creature Sabertooth was, and why he looked so damn _familiar._

“Twenty-nine!” Wilson howled, swords flashing.

“Falling behind?” Sabertooth sneered, claws flicking out (a lot like his own, now that he thought about it) and shredding some guy’s shoulder.

Logan bared his teeth, dropping his shoulders and tackling a mutant with spikes sticking out of his face. The spikes pricked his skin, tearing, and Wolverine winced and followed through. The mutant howled, apparently _not_ mutated to withstand the several hundred pounds of force.

Oh well.

“Twenty-nine!”

Sabertooth snorted again, disdain crinkling his nose, and _fuck_ if that wasn’t such a familiar expression Logan damn near twitched out of his skin.

“Listen, bub, if you got a problem –”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence. _Die mutant die,_ someone whisper-screamed inside his head, and Charles Xavier was _there_ like razors and barbed-wire, and he heard Sabertooth howling _Jimmy Jimmy no one gets to kill you but_ me! and the screaming, and everyone was writhing, and he roared—

***

 _“You see,” Erik-Jason whispers, and his face is a lopsided grin. A hundred million red lights, one for each and every mutant in the_ world, _glimmers, and it’s so beautiful Charles can feel his heart breaking._

 _Erik’s hands are warm on his shoulders._

 _“Now,” he says, and Charles loves him, he does, so much, he wants to say_ i’m so sorry _but he can’t. “Here’s what I need you to do…”_

And one by one, the millions and millions of lights started to flicker.

  
 **10.**

 _There is something wrong with his house._

 _It’s hard to notice, at first, because it looks just like his home, but it’s_ not. _There’s something wrong._

 _There are no children._

 _The house is too quiet. For the last forty years he’s had_ children _around him all the time, and children are loud. Children are messy. Children break windows and vases and paint on the walls, or sneeze and blow out a wall, or break into the liquor cabinets and get loudly, hilariously drunk._

 _And none of that is happening._

 _The mansion is quiet, and Charles smiles at him sadly._

 _“You’re a smart one, aren’t you?” he says._

 _Erik narrows his eyes, and lets_ rage _build and build in his bones until the whole mansion shakes with it, and Charles stares at him with wide, Cuba-blue eyes._

 _No. That’s wrong. Charles’s eyes are_ wrong. _They’re the wrong shade of blue._

 _And his face is perhaps too round, he’s a little shorter than he should be, and his smile is wrong, and all of a sudden Jason Stryker is standing there in the shaking mansion, and Erik’s_ furious.

 _“Get out,” he says, slowly and clearly, every word laced, “of my_ head _.”_

 _And he throws himself_ out, _power quaking, and the mansion shakes and falls to dust, and Jason falls, torn apart by his own blood—_

Erik woke up howling, hands thrown, his power tearing from him like bullets. _Die mutant die_ screamed in his ears, whispered against his mind, and he fought it.

Metal snapped and creaked and groaned, suddenly alive, bristling, and he struggled against the whisper-screams, and the knives in his head—

His eyes found William Stryker’s, and he bared his teeth.

Stryker laughed, ugly, and Erik grinned.

His power surged. Stryker’s body was absurdly low in iron, but there was _enough_ —

Erik crooked his fingers, and Stryker gasped, clutching his head, his stomach, eyes going wide and surprised. He opened and closed his mouth, and crumpled.

The walkway shuddered and Cerebro— _complete,_ he realized, through the sheeting pain—quaked, and Charles Xavier made a sound half-way between a cry and a laugh.

Jason Stryker stumbled back, hands shaking, eyes still mostly blank, and he looked at Erik and said “please,” and before he could stop himself, Erik reached out and stopped his heart.

 _“Charles,_ ” he rasped, clutching his head, and the walkway jumped and shuddered, Cerebro’s panels clacked together, wires twisted, sparks flew, a hundred million red lights wavered—

 _Erik,_ Charles said, and his face was wet, his mind was a broken arrow. _Erik, I can_ hear them.

“Charles.” Erik reeled, blood boiling, power thrashing. “Charles, you have to _stop,_ you’re killing us.”

The red lights flickered, and the _pressure—_

“Erik,” Charles croaked, and the knife-stab retreated. The red lights flickered again, and then grew brighter and brighter. Erik breathed again, and the agony faded,

“You’re alright,” Charles said, and he looked _relieved_ even though he was clearly in pain. “I thought—Stryker was using you as bait.”

“He wanted you here,” Erik murmured, “to kill all the mutants.”

Charles’s face went suddenly, blindingly hard. “Yes,” he said grimly, and gritted his teeth. The red lights began to shift, blurring, and flicked out entirely. Erik shouted, but Charles waved him off. New lights, bright white, replaced the red, and instead of a hundred million there were _billions_ of these lights; one for each and every human in the world.

Erik was cold. “Charles,” he began, “what are you—”

Charles’s face screwed up in agony, and the white lights began to flicker.

 _Oh no._

“Charles,” Erik snapped. “Stop it, Charles, you can’t, you can’t kill them _all_.”

“Why not?” The telepath snarled. “I’ve been in their minds, Erik, they’d do the same. Look at Stryker! They _tried_ to do the same, and would do it again, if we gave them the chance! But I won’t,” he said, low, deadly. “I won’t, ever again.” He cried out, bit down on it, and the lights pulsed wildly.

Humans were dying.

“ _No,_ ” Erik said forcefully, reaching out. His hand brushed Charles’s shoulder. “Don’t, not all of them are Stryker—”

“ _You don’t get to decide!_ ” Charles shouted. “ _You let them try to take my power away!”_

Erik reeled back, pain blooming behind his eyes, and Cerebro rattled and swayed. It was drawn to him. He could stop it, easily, but he didn’t want to hurt Charles.

( _again_ )

“Listen to me,” Erik said, and he pitched it above Charles’s cry, above the rattle-quake of Cerebro, the whining howl of the machinery. “My friend, _listen to me._ Killing them all will not bring you peace. You’re wiping out an entire _race_ of people. Billions of lives, each one with the possibility of having a mutant child, or of being a good person.”

 _Aren’t you angry?_ Charles’s mind roared, too much after decades of silence. _You should be. They took your children. Nearly your life._

 _Of course I’m angry,_ Erik wanted to scream. _Of course I am. I’m_ furious, _I want to rip Stryker’s men_ apart.

 _You have no right to judge me,_ the voice hissed, greater and more terrible than it had ever been. _You hurt me! You_ betrayed _me!_

 _I’m sorry!_ Erik howled, trying to get above the noise. The white lights dimmed, flickered, pulsed, hanging by a thread. _Do not take your anger out on innocent people, take it out on_ me, _Charles, I hurt you. You have to let the humans go._

 _Never._

Erik reached out, grabbed the machine he’d been forced to build, and held it in his palms. With a twitch, he could cut its power. It would be easy. And billions of people would be safe. But Charles…

 _You’ll die,_ he whispered. _Charles, you have to let go. You’ll die._

 _You would chose_ them? Outrage, wild and hot and overwhelming. _Over your own people? Over me?_

Erik’s heart hurt. His head hurt. His _power_ hurt, twisting out of him, and the walkway bounced and Cerebro rattled.

 _Let go,_ he ordered. Sorrow welled up, an ocean, and he tasted Cuba-salt and metal on his tongue. _Let. Them._ Go, _Charles._

 _I can’t._ Fear now, and anger, twined together so close one was the other. _They’ll kill you._

 _No, they won’t. They’ll understand, but you have to let them go,_ now.

 _I—_

 _Let them go!_

And Charles, a howl lost and dying in his throat, let the lights flare vividly, viciously white, and slumped forward.

The helmet slid off his head, clattering, and Cerebro creaked, almost startled, and the light died.

Silence.

Without Charles connected to it, Erik reached out and ripped Cerebro _down,_ cutting loose bolts and wires and watching them tumble. They fell, an avalanche, and he thought, under the terrible ringing clatter, he heard Charles sobbing.

He felt _old_ , older than seventy-something. He was a hundred, five hundred, a thousand years old, and helpless with the weights pinning him down.

He couldn’t breath.

 _Charles,_ he whispered, and his old friend’s mind was a razor blade, wounded, defeated. _Charles, you did the right thing._

 _Oh?_ Bitterness, and resignation.

 _Yes,_ Erik said, and held out his hand, tugging Charles’s chair back and back until he was close, and the track marks from years ago were stark in the dim light. Guilt twisted. _I’m sorry._

Broken fingers tugged at his thoughts, and anger stirred, but it was mostly ash. _Yeah. Me too._

Erik offered Charles a lopsided grin, and couldn’t speak. He just _felt,_ and let Charles feel—

 _Peace,_ he whispered, over and over, like a prayer and a benediction. _Peace, peace, shalom._

 _Shalom,_ Charles agreed, laughter-knives tickling. He—hesitantly, shattered—took Erik’s hand, and they waited.

  
 _three months later_

 **11.**

“ _I do not know how to apologize to a nation. I do not know if this nation will accept my apology, or if they even should._

 _“But I will try anyway._

 _“The mutants of the world have suffered much, since their discovery in 1962. Yes, there have been mutants who have been evil, who have murdered and stolen and destroyed with their abilities, but there are also humans who are evil, who murder and steal and destroy._

 _“We have forgotten this._

 _“There have been faults, on both sides, and intolerance, on both sides._

 _“But we will never heal if we continue hating each other._

 _“As many of you know, a rogue scientist attacked a peaceful school of mutants several months ago, resulting in the Telepathic Crisis that harmed both human and mutant. That rogue scientist lied to and tricked not only mutantkind, but me as well. He came to me asking if he could take down a training facility, and I gave him my permission._

 _“I will regret this forever. I should have examined his information myself. I should have looked into his background. I should have taken steps to make sure he wasn’t abusing mutants, and twisting them for his own gain._

 _“I did not, and I am sorry. I am sorry I didn’t care enough to check. I am sorry I ignored the pleas of a whole nation of people. I am sorry I allowed my fear to get the better of me, and that innocent people suffered for it._

 _“I am sorry that, for forty years, we have denied your rights, and your humanity. What happened to you at places like Alkali Lake and Three Mile Island, and other facilities all over the world, is an atrocity. I will not allow it to happen again._

 _“Mutants of America, of the world, I am_ sorry. _From now on, I will not fight with you. I will meet you, in peace, and we can work together to mend this rift._

“ _And as the first step, I name Doctor Henry McCoy the Secretary of Mutant Rights, so that we may move forward in these turbulent times—”_

***

“Fucking _human,_ ” the young mutant spat, his fists balled.

“Hey,” said the old man, cutting in. He pressed a hand to the young mutant’s chest, holding him back. “Knock it off.”

The mutant sneered, trying to shake off the old man. “Back the fuck off, human. This asswipe insulted my father. He’s got it _coming._ ”

“Didn’t you hear the President this morning?” the old man asked mildly. “Leave him alone. Go on.”

The mutant rolled his eyes, sullen anger flashing, and drew back to throw a punch.

 _Go,_ Charles ordered, and the mutant blanched, staggered back and jogged the other way. Charles rolled his eyes. Kids these days.

The human nodded to him.

“Don’t insult people’s fathers,” Charles suggested. _Probably not the best way to make friends._

The young man, too, blanched, and he nodded hastily.

Charles smiled, picked up his chess board, and continued on.

Chicago was lovely in the spring. Lincoln Park was alive, budding, and the air smelled of rain, and new flowers.

The mutant called X took a deep, satisfied breath and made his way over to the chess tables, settling in among the other old men. He didn’t want to play anyone, not yet. This was a new chess set, and he wouldn’t let anyone else touch the pieces until he’d learned them himself.

Half the pieces were wooden, smooth, deep mahogany that smelled sharp in the clean air. The other half were metal, sleek, polished to a sheen.

Charles smiled, turned them over in his fingers, and began to play.

***

Erik twitched the TV off with a finger and leaned back.

“That was strangely heartfelt,” he mused, and Logan snorted.

“Politicians. They’re all the same.”

Erik shrugged. “This one meant it, though. He put a mutant in his Cabinet. That’s a big step.”

Wolverine shook his head and hopped off the desk. “Yeah, yeah. We’re all very proud of the furball.”

Erik laughed quietly, rolling the kinks out of his shoulders.

“So,” Logan said. “What’re we going to do now?”

Erik looked up at him. “Rebuild,” he said. “Carry on.” He tapped the files on his desk. “Order another year’s worth of supplies, and repair the damage. It’s about time for a remodel, anyway. This place has been the same since the first World War.”

Logan snorted, leaned against the doorframe. “Good idea. The kids’ll want to paint their own rooms, though.”

“Let them,” Erik shrugged. He studied the blank television screen thoughtfully. “If the President meant what he said, I get the feeling we’re not going to need this old place for much longer, anyway.”

Logan arched an eyebrow. “Yeah? You mean that?”

Erik shrugged again. “It’s always been my intention,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” said Wolverine, and he looked mildly disturbed. “It’s just, I’ll miss the little brats, you know?”

Erik laughed. “You could always be a real teacher, you know. You have a way with pottery, after all.”

The infamous, bloodthirsty, battle-crazed Wolverine _blushed._ “Shut up,” he muttered, and ducked out.

The professor smiled to himself, looking out the hole in his wall to the fields below. Spring was beautiful in Westchester, and the children were enjoying themselves. They had somehow roped the teachers into a particularly vicious game of football, and it was amusing to watch Scott and Wade try and outdo each other.

The mansion was only half-repaired. Windows still gaped, the West Wing was still _gone,_ and his office was missing most of a wall, but Erik didn’t mind. He had renovation plans drawn up already, and the contractor would be coming in a few weeks.  
 _I must sent Wade to Genosha after Alex, too,_ he thought. He’d given Alex a few months, to find his own way. It was time to bring him home.

Still half-smiling, he pulled his new chessboard out from under his desk, turned the pieces, half rich mahogany, half solid metal, over in his hands.

 _Windows,_ he thought to himself, as he began to play. _That’s what I want here. Huge, enormous bay windows._

He paused, double-checking the budget, and grinned. Oh yes. There was plenty left for the windows, and several gallons of paint.

Perhaps he could convince the children to paint Logan’s classroom magenta.


	5. iridescent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chessboard sits in the corner of his office.

epilogue: iridescent (the professor)

  
 _sometime in the not too distant future_

“Professor?”

He looks up, and standing in front of his desk is a young woman with wide, earnest eyes and soft brown hair, twisting a few strands between her fingers.

He knows her face, vaguely, but not her name—she’s one of his literature students, but he has so many these days that it’s hard to keep track and he’s, well, he’s very old. His memory isn’t what it used to be—and he arches an eyebrow.

“Um,” says the girl. “You’re—um.”

“Spit it out, child,” he says, perhaps a little impatiently. It’s five o’clock and he has somewhere to be at half-six.

“You’re… a mutant, right?” The girl fidgeted, clearly uncomfortable.

Erik Lehnsherr, Professor of Literature, bit back a sigh. “The drop-out forms are in the Department of Academics. Just fill one out, they’ll understand.”

The girl drew back a bit, confused. “Um,” she said. “Sir? I don’t want to drop your class.”

He blinks, a little surprised, honestly. Most humans, once learning that he is, in fact, a mutant, drop his classes like they’re radioactive. Usually it’s their parents’ prompting—they don’t want their precious, normal children taught by a mutant.

“No?” he says, probably a little stupidly. The girl offers him a shy smile.

“No,” she says earnestly. “Your classes are really interesting, they’re way better than Professor Woodrow’s.”

He almost smiles. “Yes,” he agrees. “They are, but you are the first… human to tell me so.”

The girl grins. “Everyone else thinks so too,” she assures him. He puts his papers down to give her his full attention, intrigued despite himself. It’s been a while since he’s had a friendly conversation with a human, to be honest. The rest of the faculty treats him with polite, intellectual distance, and most of his human students are too terrified to actually talk to him. The mutant students talk to him, of course (he actually can’t get a few of them to leave him alone), but it’s refreshing to meet someone not disgusted, not afraid.

“They’re just too scared to say it.”

He snorts. “Am I really that intimidating?”

The girl shrugs sheepishly. “A little,” she admits. “And most kids’ parents don’t want them talking to you.”

His good mood fades, a little. He’s always known it, of course, but hearing it still stings.

“Yours don’t care, then?”

The girl shrugs again. “Dunno. They probably do, but I don’t care what they think.” The expression on her face is fierce, determined, and she looks like Ororo, for a moment, and Erik feels a twitch of homesickness.

“No?”

“You’re not a bad person,” she says. “You’re the one they call Magneto, right? Professor Magneto?”

He nods. “Sometimes,” he says. “Once. Not much anymore. All the ones who called me that have outgrown it.” And they have—the Academy for the Gifted no longer exists.

The girl takes a deep breath. “I wanna—I want to say thank you.”

He blinks. “For?”

“Getting the Mutant-Human Equality Bill passed,” she says. “When I was little, my best friend was a mutant, and they didn’t let her go to school once they found out. But she can go to school now.” The young woman smiles at him, wide and earnest. “She’s allowed now, and she went to college two months ago.”

Erik blinks again, and there’s something terribly warm in his chest. _I’m going soft in my old age,_ he thinks.

“So thank you,” the girl says. “For doing that for her.”

He inclines his head deeply—in prayer, maybe, or dignity—and smiles. “Tell me, Ms….?”

She blushes. “Kate,” she says. “Kaitlin Stryker.”

He starts— _Stryker—_ and looks into her face. He can see it now, traces of William Stryker, of his father, and he wants to hate the girl for it, but he can’t. He never knew Stryker had a daughter.

“Ms. Stryker,” he says. “What is your major?”

“I’m going to be a journalist,” she tells him. “Or a novelist. Or maybe a little of both.”

He looks her up and down critically. She’s small and very young (well, to him anyway, he was old before she was born, probably, and it is then that it occurs to him that she might not be William Stryker’s daughter; she might be Jason’s, and the implications make him feel a little ill), with an air of naïveté he usually can’t stand.

There’s steel in her, though, the kind of fighter’s heart he recognizes.

“You’ll be good at it,” he says.

She beams. “Thanks!” Kate Stryker starts fidgeting again, playing with her hair, glancing shyly away.

“Professor?” she asks.

“Yes?”

“I was wondering, um, could I maybe interview you? For my first book?”

He leans back in his chair, considering her thoughtfully. He sincerely doubts he’ll live long enough for a young undergrad like her to actually graduate, but still, it couldn’t hurt anything. He knows what she wants to know, though. They’ve all wanted to know the same thing, since 1964.

“I wouldn’t mind,” he says slowly, after a long minute. “You want to know about X, don’t you?”

She blushes. “Yes,” she admits. “But not just him, I want to know about all of it—the bills, your school, everything.”

He stares. He’s never been asked about his school before, really. “Alright,” he finds himself saying. He glances at his watch; five fifteen. He has time. And he can always use senility as an excuse for his tardiness, not that Hank will believe it.

“What would you like to know?”

“You still… talk to X, don’t you?” Kate asks. She’s produced a notebook and a pencil from nowhere and she’s staring at him avidly, watching his face. “I mean, that’s what everyone else says.”

He tilts his head and looks around his office; there are books and papers everywhere, a few chairs scattered around, some framed pictures of his children on the walls along with degrees in seven different languages.

There are letters, unopened and opened, scattered across his desk, and pens and pencils are buried under the mass of theses and papers and hastily-written notes.

The window is big and wide—he’s not afraid of being assassinated anymore, so he can let the sun in, finally—and light spills, iridescent, over his office.

In the corner, on a rickety old table, there is a chessboard carved from oak, and half of its pieces are made of metal and the other half of smooth, polished mahogany. A game is in progress; currently, the mahogany pieces are destroying the metal ones, but that’s subject to change. Underneath the table there is an old, shimmering helmet gathering dust; Erik hasn’t used it for years.

He looks at the chessboard and smiles slightly, secretly, and there’s a gentle, tired warmth in his mind, a truce after decades of war.

He turns back to Kaitlin Stryker, and he smiles.

“Why don’t I start from the beginning,” he says. “It’ll make more sense that way, I think.”

She nods eagerly, clearly excited, and pulls up a chair.

The sunlight slants through the room, warm, soft, and Erik Lehnsherr, Professor of Literature, once Magneto, closes his eyes.

“I met Charles Xavier when I was twenty-six years old,” he begins, and somewhere far away, where the light is growing moment by moment, Charles Xavier moves a knight on a chessboard identical to the one in Erik’s office.

“Check,” he murmurs, and in his head, Erik laughs. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be sure to visit the artist!!


End file.
